


How Much Love Can the Weight of Water Carry?

by 00QEros (Dassandre)



Series: What the Water Can Carry [1]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Atypical Service Animals, Awesome Eve Moneypenny, BAMF James Bond, Bets & Wagers, Blow Jobs, Clothing Kink, Dom/sub Undertones, Drowning, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Englishmen Sharing Feelings, Eventual Smut, Fandom Allusions & Cliches & References, Fluff and Smut, Gareth Mallory is a saint, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Inspired by Art, Leave a Tender Moment Alone Moneypenny, Literary References & Allusions, M/M, Madeleine's a Bitch, Minor James Bond/Madeleine Swann, Mutual Pining, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-SPECTRE, Post-Skyfall, Q has a family, Q is a Holmes, Quartermasters Who Don't Float, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Romance, SPECTRE Fix-It, Semi-Public Sex, Sharing a Bed, Sickfic, bickering like an old married couple, hangovers, improper use of a billiard table
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-09-20 04:47:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 39,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9476378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/00QEros
Summary: Though Bond returned to MI6 after his ill advised jaunt around the globe with Madeleine Swann, Q still struggles with his own feelings for the agent in spite of the fact that Bond is clearly not the same man as the one who walked away from their friendship on Westminster Bridge.James regrets having left London and MI6, but it is nothing in comparison to the remorse he feels for abandoning Q.  However, James has made repairing their friendship his primary goal in the hope of gaining something he never realised he needed as badly as he does.But Bond really hasn’t had a good time of it lately.  Breaking his leg in a freak accident, James camps out at Q’s flat when the white-washed, soulless walls of Medical become too much for him to tolerate.  Unfortunately, his leg is only the beginning of Bond’s health problems, and Q is conscripted into being James’ caretaker.Confined to the close quarters of Q’s flat, the Quartermaster finds himself opening back up to the agent, but will the two men find their way to one another as they should have done years ago, or is time no longer on their side?





	1. The Unexpected Events of an Unexpected Evening In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beili](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beili/gifts), [springbok7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/gifts), [Chestnut_NOLA](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chestnut_NOLA/gifts).



> This is part of the 2016-2017 00Q Reverse Big Bang, and I am so thrilled to have been a part of it. This story was inspired by the gorgeous artwork of Beili that appears below. It's just such a lovely piece! It will be a few chapters before the scene inspired by the art actually appears in the story, however. As my beloved beta knows, I apparently can't write anything small, and this story continues that trend.
> 
> My thanks to Chestnut_NOLA for her excellent organization of this event. I know it cannot have been easy wrangling all of the artists and writers. My love to The Nut!
> 
> My final bit of thanks is to my beta-reader and dear, dear friend, Springbok7. I never would have guessed that such an important friendship would have come into being from a supportive comment in my first Bond fic, but it did, and it is beyond precious to me. Love you, darlin'!

"Essential" by Beili

 

 

 

* * *

 

## Chapter One:  "The Unexpected Events of an Unexpected Evening In"

 

 

 

Q supposed he should have expected this development.  This was 007, after all, and if there was one thing Q had learned about the man over the years, it was that James Bond had a low threshold for boredom, and clearly Bond was close -- _frighteningly_ close, apparently -- to reaching that threshold.

It wasn’t Q’s responsibility to keep Bond entertained, but the intelligence agent was apparently not going to leave his Quartermaster with much of a choice.  

Perhaps if Bond had injured himself on assignment in service to Queen and Country, he might have reacted to the entire situation with a bit more of a stalwart attitude.  Or if it had happened whilst on holiday in Gstaad, leaving the agent with a romantic tale to tell the snow bunnies next to a crackling fire with hot, buttered rum close at hand, he could have more easily relaxed into the inactivity enforced upon him.

Sadly, neither was the case.  In fact, the sheer mundanity of the  circumstances surrounding the broken leg -- slipping on the ice in the MI6 secured (though not, apparently, secured from _ice_ ) employee car park -- compounded by the need for surgical repair which would be followed by weeks upon endless weeks of bone knitting and rehabilitation had only added insult to the entire situation and agitated the agent further, so the Quartermaster couldn’t really colour himself surprised when he came home late one night to find Bond sitting in Q’s favourite armchair with his casted leg propped on two throw pillows atop the coffee table.

It had been only three days since the surgery to repair the man’s leg.  Bond _should_ have still been in Medical.  In fact, Q had thought he _was_ still in Medical.  Little wonder, then, that Q felt that the future of his sanity was a bleak one from the outset.  

Of course, it never entered Q’s head that Bond might have no intention of aggravating the Quartermaster -- well, maybe just a _little_ \-- but rather that James might simply want to spend time with Q whilst he recovered.  

It was inconceivable.  

The odd thing was that, for all his brilliance, Q was apparently among those individuals who believed _that_ particular word meant something other than what it actually meant.  Had he not been, Q might have been better prepared for the start of a sequence of events that would forever alter the course of his life.  

Sighing inwardly at the intrusion into his flat -- though such unexpected visitations from Bond really weren't all that _unexpected_ anymore -- Q pulled the book he had bought for himself in Paddington Station on the way home out of his messenger bag and dropped it unceremoniously in Bond’s lap as he passed through to his bedroom. Q’d been working in the fabrication shop with his petrolhead boffins all day and was in dire need of a shower.

James flipped over the book, barely glancing at the cover before he called out over his shoulder toward the bedroom, “Read it, already.”

Q popped back through the doorway.  “What do you mean ‘already’?!  The bloody thing released this morning.  I pre-ordered it _weeks_ ago.”

James dropped the hardcover on the table next to the armchair and picked up the glass of whisky he'd been nursing.  

Q didn’t keep whisky in the flat.  Hated the stuff.  Great.  The man was importing his own liquor.   

“The publisher’s a friend --”

“Of course he is,” Q muttered.

“-- and sent me an advance copy.  Wait.  What do you mean you _pre-ordered_ it?!  Granted, it was a diverting and informative read, well-researched, but a piece on the SAS’s Battle for Rhodesia is hardly going to sell out like it’s a Harry Potter novel, Q.”

“Thank you for that scintillating bit of literary criticism, 007,” Q rubbed his eyes behind his glasses, knocking them askew in the process and not caring enough at that point to worry about straightening them. He pointedly ignored the amused grin that bloomed on Bond’s face and gestured lamely at the three floor to ceiling bookshelves on the opposite wall. “ _Mi bibliotheca es su bibliotheca_ ,” he said in flawless Spanish and turned back toward his bedroom.

“I've read them all.”  James sipped again at his drink.

“The hell?!”  Q strode briskly to the shelves, his gestures now highly animated. “All?!  Bond, I have nearly 400 titles here: British history, world history, military history, philosophy, psychology, natural science, pure science, maths, poetry, literature and drama in four … no, _seven_ different languages -- including two _dead_ ones --”

“Yes, Q, your bookshelves are a veritable shrine to the Dewey Decimal System. I particularly enjoyed the _Iliad_ and the _Odyssey_.  Read them before, of course, but --”

“Double-O Seven, you are _not_ going to convince me that you're fluent in Homeric Greek.”

“No, but I know my way around Google Translate.”

Q slumped down to the arm of the sofa next to him. “You're in my flat a great deal more than you've let on, aren't you?”  When Bond wasn’t on a mission, he was a regular visitor to Q’s flat, though not often an _invited_ one.  Q’s initial protests had done nothing to change the situation, so he eventually stopped trying and came to even enjoy their evenings together.

James shrugged and sipped his drink, perhaps a bit more of a mouthful than before, suddenly refusing to meet Q’s tired gaze. He'd let more slip than he intended. The whisky and the medication took care of the pain in his leg but clearly muddled the mind. Bond set his drink down on top of Q’s new book, glaring at the amber liquid as though it had betrayed him.

“Bond.”  Q was still waiting for an answer to his question.

“Very well. Yes,” James snapped, then retreated. “Most days when I'm in country and not needed at HQ, I'm here.  Reading.  Happy?!”

“Are _you_?” Q asked, genuinely wanting to know the answer.

“Yes. I’m … It's quiet. I can think. Or _not_ think. It’s --”

“Safe.”

“Something like that, yeah,” James admitted so quietly that Q barely heard him. “Restful, too.”

Q studied the man before him.  Bond looked … sad?  Lost?  Apprehensive?  Q wasn’t sure which adjective was the best fit to what he saw on Bond’s face.  All three?  Suddenly, or perhaps not quite so, Q felt a great deal of sympathy for the man.

The damage to the Bond’s leg had been extensive -- multiple fractures were held together with plates and pins -- and even with the eventual rehabilitation, there was legitimate concern that Bond would not regain enough use of the limb to allow him to return to active duty.  Simply put, the man’s career was on the line.

It was an irony that, unfortunately, was not lost upon the Quartermaster.  

Bond had done a great deal of work to repair the damage done to his career and to his relationships since having returned to MI6 after thirteen months gallivanting around the globe with Madeleine Swann.  And though there had been much speculation as to what precipitated Bond’s return -- Q had quickly put paid to the gossip that had been bandied about on the subject within _his_ Branch -- Bond himself never specifically addressed what had soured in the relationship to bring him back to England.

It hadn’t been an easy time for the former 007, those first few months.  Mallory had been lukewarm, at best, at the idea of even permitting the man to return to _field_ agent status let alone that of a Double-O.  It had been Bill Tanner, of all people, to initially champion the ex-agent, reminding M of all that Bond had done and sacrificed throughout his years of service, but it had been Tanner’s speculation about all the trouble that Bond could get into on his own without the influence of Six to rein him in that had convinced Mallory to approve Bond’s _conditional_ reinstatement. Moneypenny said that Mallory had practically blanched at some of the mental pictures Tanner had painted for him on the subject.

Ultimately, Mallory said that he just didn’t need the headache … or the nightmares.

Nevertheless, Bond didn’t immediate regain his Double-O status.  He had been put through the paces as any raw recruit would have been.  His missions consisted of milk runs and the occasional spot of bodyguarding.  The most intense action the agent saw during that time was when the husband of one of the Shadow Cabinet ministers accidently left his service chinchilla -- the man has a stress condition, Bond! It soothes him! -- behind in a ministry car ultimately bound for York.

Eventually, Bond’s skills were pressed back into service after three British nationals enjoying their Gap Year were kidnapped on Cyprus, bringing to light a heretofore unknown human trafficking ring.  It took Bond only three days before he returned to England with the teenagers in tow -- only slightly worse for wear after their harrowing experience -- as well as the head of the ring who, oddly enough, hadn’t fared as well on the trip back to the UK, more’s the pity.

But though 007 was back professionally, his personal relationships had taken rather longer to repair.  Mallory came around simply out of necessity, but he had made it quite clear that he would give no quarter should Bond ever again abandon his position.  

Tanner, for whatever reason, had forgiven Bond from virtually the moment he set foot back in HQ.  Moneypenny had given some token resistance in the beginning, but she confided to both Tanner and Q that she thought she understood why Bond had done as he had -- at least on some level.  She hadn’t explained the why or the how of her understanding, but Q had just chalked it all up to the quirky relationship the two had had ever since Eve shot James in Istanbul.

It had been Q who had taken the longest to forgive Bond for walking away without so much as a word.  If Mallory’s reception of Bond had been tepid, Q’s had been positively icy.  

Q couldn’t say that he was exactly proud of the way he had behaved in those first few months after Bond returned, however.  He’d been cold.  Distant.  Turning the playfully caustic banter that had meant so much to each of them to barbed, cutting remarks designed to wound Bond in the way he had wounded Q when he had tossed away their friendship like so much rubbish.  Q wasn’t naturally a vindictive person, though, not really, and he’d been mildly disgusted with his own behavior, but the truth of it was that Q had been trying to protect himself from being hurt again.

From the minute he sat down on that bench in the National Gallery, Q had known that he would come to care too much about James Bond.  In spite of his own prickly demeanor, Q was a nurturer, instinctively gravitating to the sick, the wounded, and the damaged; there were few as damaged as James Bond had been at that point in time.

Q had tried. Oh, dear Lord, how he had tried to listen to his own inner monologue -- and Moneypenny’s external one -- that warned him of the risks to his heart, but he fell arse over tit in love with the international assassin anyway.  

When Bond walked away from everything he had known that night on Westminster Bridge with Madeleine Swann in tow, it was not an insignificant part of Q’s heart that sank into the cold depths of the Thames underneath the bridge beneath his feet, but the true injury came the next morning when Bond returned only long enough to abscond with the DB5 Q had painstakingly restored for his friend.

_Friend?!  No.  You wrote him a bloody love letter with that car, Q,_ Moneypenny had argued.

There had been no thank you.  There had been no goodbye.

It was, logically, his own fault, Q supposed.  It wasn’t as though he’d ever shared with Bond the fact that he was interested in a romantic relationship.  He couldn’t even imagine what the agent’s reaction would have been to the knowledge that his thin, geeky Quartermaster wanted to lick and taste and suck him from his pinky toe to his little finger to the lobes and helices of those impossible ears.

That night, the Quartermaster had got quite properly pissed on the bottle of Bollinger the bastard had left behind for Q as recompense for 009’s stolen Aston.  The resulting hangover only added insult to Q’s injury, and if the minions of Q-Branch and the field agents and the Double-Os that remained suffered through their Quartermaster’s quite frankly horrendous mood for the next several weeks, they did so patiently and with understanding; Q had never been as good at hiding his affection for 007 as he would have liked, after all.  A year later, said personnel showed a great deal of … restraint when making clear their collective and individual points to Bond that he was never to hurt Q again.  Not that the Quartermaster had been read into that _particular_ debriefing.

Upon the man’s return, Q determined that it would be best for all considered if he limited his interactions with Bond whenever doing so would not put the man or the mission at risk, often delegating the task of kitting out the agent to his second-in-command rather than handling it himself as Q had always done in the past.  

Once she had set aside her own anger, R had taken to the task readily enough as she’d always been a fan of the oft irascible agent, and Bond, strangely enough, had not commented one way or another beyond an initial look of dismay.  

It quickly became clear, however, that Bond wasn’t the same man that once he had been.  Oh, he was still arrogant and cocksure, ruthless and deadly, seductive and secretive.  But in his limited interactions with the Quartermaster, he had been unfailingly polite and considerate, even when Q himself had not been.  There was a patience in the older man that hadn’t been there before, a stillness and steadfastness that Q couldn’t quite put his thumb on but that permeated every conversation they had together, no matter how brief or how distant Q had tried to be.

While Bond had been content to have R kit him out before each mission, he insisted upon reporting to Q directly, afterwards.  Bond always had his AARs completed and uploaded to both M’s and Q’s servers _before_ his scheduled debriefs, and still more unsettling, returned his equipment and his tech promptly and largely unscathed.  

When items _had_ been damaged, Bond carefully detailed what broke, when it happened, and how, and presented Q with properly completed replacement/repair paperwork without complaint.  Bond even apologised to Q for the loss of said item.

It was the apologising that did it.  

Q had always been able to tell when Bond was being sincere or a mocking arsehole, and, amazing though it was, Bond was truly contrite in those situations when he had made ‘poor use of your hard work, Q.’

Q forgave Bond if only to shut him up.  

The change in the man, while a breath of fresh air, was equally unsettling because it was so unlike the James Bond Q had come to know and -- sigh -- yes, love.

Things had improved exponentially in the months since then.  For all that Q still actively protected his heart, unwilling to again give his emotions carte blanche where Bond was concerned, their banter had returned to its previous mischievous teasing, their efficiency as a handler/agent team was even better than it had been prior to SPECTRE, and the Q-Branch minions had long since relaxed, secure in the knowledge that ‘mummy and daddy’ -- Q really didn’t want to dwell too much on _that_ perception-- were again on good terms.

So it was truly heartbreaking to Q that so much of what Bond had accomplished in the last year was now in jeopardy due to some sodding ice.

Q knew that he was too soft when it came to his emotions, and he had worked hard to learn to keep them under tight control so that he could be effective in his role as Quartermaster. When it came to his emotions regarding James Bond, however, Q often wondered if the phrase ‘modicum of self-control’ was simply his own personal code phrase for ‘exercise in futility.’  While he would never simply roll over and expose his underbelly to the agent, Q admitted that he did tend to act more impulsively where the man was concerned.  As Q considered his next decision, he realised that clearly tonight would be no different.

He reached between the cushions of the overstuffed sofa and rooted around until he found what he was looking for. He checked to ensure that the charge hadn't been depleted and tossed the Kindle at Bond who caught it one-handed.

“Not much to read on that, but if you don't see something you like, there's over 600 pounds worth of credit on it. Help yourself.”

“That's a lot of quid for someone who clearly prefers real books,” Bond observed as he began searching through the eReader’s menu.

“The hazards of being a popular boss at the holidays, more Amazon gift cards than I know what to do with. I keep telling them eBay is more versatile, but does anyone listen?”  

Q stood up and slid open the drawer of the small end table next to Bond. He pulled out a healthy stack of take-away menus, pressed the lot into Bond’s chest who clasped them there, and finally resumed his trek to his bedroom and the shower he had promised himself.

“Dinner’s on me, then?” James asked, juggling the menus and the Kindle.

“If not, you know where the door is. Order what you want, but make sure it’s hot and plentiful. I've not eaten since last night.”

Bond chuckled as the door shut firmly behind Q. “Yes, sir, Quartermaster.”

Q and Bond ended up sharing a pleasant evening of conversation, surprisingly very little of it work-related, as they filled their bellies with take-away from Mango Kitchen.  Bond had done a surprising job at selecting many of Q’s favourites -- lamb korma, saag paneer, and onion stuffed naan among them -- and once each had stated their hunger, had then drifted into their own pursuits for the night:  Bond digging deep into a crime thriller whose preview chapter had apparently captured his attention, and Q inspecting the design specs of three new rifle scopes that the techs in R&D had submitted for his consideration.  

He could have kicked Bond out immediately after dinner.  Probably should have done, but Q had to admit that, for once, the mere presence of another person was rather nice.  Bond wasn’t always an irritating git.

Q grew rather proud of himself when he was finally able to limit the number of times his eyes lingered on the splendid form across the room from twelve to only four times every ten minutes.  Especially since _no one_ should look _that_ good wearing reading glasses.   Q was torn between wanting rip them from Bond’s face or insist the man recline on the sofa wearing nothing save those spectacles while Q rubbed himself all over Bond like a cat in heat.

_Get yourself under control!  You_ know _he’s not for you._

But knowing and wanting were two very different animals.  And really, what would the creature look like that _didn’t_ want James Bond?  Q couldn’t begin to countenance.

_Yes_ , _I_ am _the cliche_.

For all that the man was pushing 45 years old, a time when many men began fighting the effects of advancing age: pot belly, diminishing hearing and eyesight, increasingly lax muscle tone, hair loss ... impotence, Bond showed no overt signs beyond his craggy face (were crow’s feet always so fucking sexy?) and increasingly stiff joints (Q knew several helpful massage techniques) that he was anything past his prime.  

The broken leg was an outlier, of course.

Beneath the loose aubergine cashmere jumper Bond wore, Q knew the agent was cut in a way that made marble statues envious; there was only so much that those perfectly tailored bespoke suits could hide, after all.  Granted, Q’s knowledge of human anatomy was largely limited to what he needed to know to develop the technology and gadgetry for his agents to use in the field, but he couldn’t help but wonder if the muscles in the male abdomen allowed for more than a six-pack as Bond was surely sporting at least twice that number.  

Then Bond pushed up the sleeves of the jumper, and Q nearly imploded with want and need right then and there.  Those forearms of corded muscles throwing into sharp relief the veins and arteries beneath tanned skin, tapered down to strong wrists and powerful fingers that could torture and kill as easily as they could tease and arouse.

Q closed his eyes and plopped his head against the back of the sofa, desperate to will away the erection that threatened to undo him.  

_Oh, I am so fucked!_  

Q refused to give voice to the yelp of desperation that all but strangled him where he sat, but he couldn’t prevent his fingers from tearing at his hair in frustration.

“Q?”  The boffin jumped at the sound of Bond’s voice.  A bit gruffer than normal, oddly enough.   “Everything okay?” James continued after clearing his throat a few times.

“What?  Oh.  Yes … um … yes. I’m fine, 007.  Just fine.  I just need … some, err … tea!  Yes, that’s it.  Would you like some?”  He jumped from his spot on the sofa and all but fled to the kitchen where he flicked on the kettle.

James did not so much as twitch a nostril until Q was out of the room, but once the boffin had disappeared into the kitchen, the Double-O allowed himself a broad smile.  Q had been sneaking glances his way for most of the night, and for all that his Quartermaster thought he was being surreptitious, Q’s brand of subtlety in this case would be like comparing a child lighting a sparkler to the New Year’s Eve Fireworks Celebration over the Thames.

It had been a long, hard-won process for James to get back into Q’s good graces, to begin to repair the friendship they’d shared prior to Bond’s ill-advised ‘retirement,’ and based on the slight bulge in Q’s trousers that he had been unable to completely hide during his dash for the kettle, James was cautiously optimistic that Q might finally be receptive to something … more.

In fact, James had been planning to ask Q out for dinner and had been making reservations at a smokehouse restaurant in Soho that Q had expressed interest in when he had slipped on that bloody ice in the car park.   

James glared at the offending limb where it now rested on an actual ottoman that Q had unearthed for Bond from his guest bedroom after dinner.  It was much more comfortable than the coffee table had been, but the pain was definitely increasing.  Not only in the leg itself, but throughout his body.  

James just hurt.  

He reached into the pocket of his joggers for the vial of painkillers Medical had given him when he checked himself out earlier in the day.  He dry swallowed two of the pills and immediately started coughing as the chalky tablets scraped their way down his already scratchy throat.   

Q returned a moment later with tea for them both, herbal due to the late hour, but James wasn’t complaining.

James set the Kindle on his lap to grasp the cup in both hands, taking two quick sips of the hot drink to ease the coughing Q had heard from the kitchen.  Q tried to contain the lurch beneath his sternum as their fingers brushed one another’s in the process.  He immediately chastised himself.

_You’re not a bloody RomCom heroine, for God’s sake!_

“I’ve no biscuits in, I’m afraid.  Haven’t been to the shops in awhile.”

“Boffins cannot subsist on Earl Grey alone, Q,” James observed, only slightly chastising.  They both knew that Bond was not much better at the domestic side of life.  He loved cooking.  Was quite good at it, actually, but rarely took the time to do so anymore.  It was just too tedious to brave the shops when he was only cooking for himself.  Nodding his thanks, James sipped again at the tea in an attempt to soothe his tight throat, and they both returned to their reading.

Hours later, James jerked awake in the chair.  Blinking a few times to clear his vision, he looked at his watch.  God, it was late.  

At some point the Kindle and his readers had migrated to the coffee table and a blanket had been draped across him.  James stretched and groaned at how his muscles only hurt more after doing so.  He eyed the sofa, wondering if he could -- no, he had imposed upon his Quartermaster long enough.  James grasped his crutches and struggled to his feet, deliberately ignoring the cautious look Q was giving him.  He murmured a ‘good night’ and maybe a ‘thank you’ and made it halfway to the front door before he swayed and practically collapsed in Q’s arms.  

“Bond!”  Q managed to ease the much bulkier man down the wall of the sitting room to the floor without jostling his leg overly much.  The agent was pale, warm to the touch, and suddenly listless.  However, he _had_ been dozing for quite awhile, so the ‘suddenly’ component of Quartermaster’s diagnosis was less than reliable.  Bond looked terrible.

“I _feel_ terrible,” the agent admitted to Q’s apparently vocalised concern, serving only to worry the Quartermaster further as the agent rarely admitted to feeling the effects of injury or illness.

“And that’s me calling Medical.”  Keeping one hand braced on Bond’s shoulder to keep him upright -- he looked like he would ooze through the cracks in the hardwood floor, otherwise -- Q leaned back to grab his mobile from beneath the side table where it had dropped as Q caught the falling agent.  

Bond didn’t even have the energy to protest.

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

When Q had originally shoved the take-away menus into Bond’s hands, he had not realized that the invitation to share dinner would become an invitation for the agent to move into Q’s flat for the duration of his recuperation, but that had been before Bond had developed a particularly nasty case of the flu and most definitely before Q had been strong-armed by Mallory and Medical’s chief physician, Dr. Y’da, into tending 007 through his illness.

“The man knows bugger all about taking care of himself, even during the best of times,” Y’da observed while flipping through the pages of Bond’s extensive medical history. “This flu’s been wreaking havoc through Six as it stands, but add that to the fact that’s he’s only three days past surgery; discharged himself against medical advice, _again_ , I might add,” she tossed the file to the table that hovered over Bond’s lap as he lay in the treatment bed, hooked up to a variety of drips to rehydrate him, and glared at the, quite frankly, pathetic looking Double-O, “He either has someone look after him or he stays here for the duration.”

Bond scowled and opened his mouth, but the fuss he was no doubt ready to unleash on sum and sundry was cut short by a coughing fit that practically left _Q_ breathless from watching it happen.

“I don’t see ‘option two’ being a particularly positive one for anyone involved, do you, Quartermaster?” Mallory interjected in that annoyingly lazy tone of voice he used when offering up choices that really weren’t _choices_ at all.

Q raised his eyes to the ceiling, half expecting to actually _see_ the Sword of Damocles hanging over his head in spite of the fact that he definitely wasn’t at the head of this particular power dynamic.

Five hours after he had left, a weary Quartermaster returned to his flat with an even more exhausted James Bond in tow along with a slew of medications and his own week-long term of non-negotiable ‘compassionate leave.’  

Q’s hadn’t even attempted to disguise his incredulous bark of laughter when Mallory had used _that_ term, and may have even pulled the muscles in his eyes will the roll that accompanied it.  

Y’da likened it to a form of modified quarantine.  

As Q-Branch still had their digs in the oldest parts of the Churchill Bunkers, far away from the rest of HQ in the FCO Building and even Medical in the ‘newer’ tunnels, the boffins had thus far managed to escape the influenza that had ravaged Six.  The Quartermaster was now, unfortunately, the exception, having spent hours in close quarters with Bond.  There were several ongoing key missions, and it would be foolish to allow someone who was potentially infected into a ‘clean’ environment. Q’s mission specialists were already handling agents in the field, and R was perfectly capable of supervising TSS and R&D in Q’s absence, Mallory had argued.

“You know, the NASA physicians said much the same thing to Ken Mattingly prior to the launch of Apollo 13, and _those_ roses never bloomed, either,” Q had groused under his breath.

“Which is one of the reasons why it was deemed a ‘successful failure’ rather than sodding tragedy,” M replied blithely and pointed at Bond.  “ _He_ is a sodding tragedy on the best of days, and I don’t need him turning things cataclysmic because he’s not got sense enough to actually take the time to recuperate.”

Both Q and Bond were offended by Mallory’s choice of words, Q actually outpacing Bond in his protests and defense of the oft high-maintenance agent, but as was typical for the men’s relationship, it wasn’t long before they turned their qips and comments and observations on one another, suddenly bickering like an old, married couple.

It was gratifying to see.

Mallory was increasingly amused at the interplay between his Quartermaster and his best Double-O, especially once Y’da ordered a wheelchair be brought in to escort Bond to a waiting car that would take him and the Quartermaster back to Q’s flat.  

Mallory was therefore completely unable to contain his grin when Q pointed an angry finger at the agent when Bond protested the suggestion that he couldn’t make his way to the car under his own power.

“I walked _in_ here, didn't I,” he snapped, eyes positively glacial with his anger and offended dignity.

“I would hardly call that display ‘walking,’ 007.  My 95 year-old gran maneuvers better with her walker. You could barely sit up in that _bed_ under your own power, Bond,” Q snipped. “You really think you’ve got the strength to maneuver on crutches across an icy car park?  That’s what got you into this bloody mess in the fir --”

Q slammed on the brakes of his verbal strop when he saw the tight, closed off look that suddenly settled on Bond’s face.  Q sighed and closed his eyes for a moment.  He pulled himself back together by remembering the stress Bond was under regarding his uncertain future. He needed support, not recriminations.

The truth of it was that Q wasn’t all that put out about being tapped as Bond’s nursemaid for the foreseeable future. Oh, Q was indignant over being forced out of his Branch for a variety of reasons, but … well, he still gravitated to the ‘sick, wounded, and damaged’ as much as he ever did, especially if the sick, the wounded, and the damaged happened to be one Double-O named James Bond.

Once Bond was settled into the wheelchair, Q rested his hand on his friend’s shoulder and leaned in closely so that Mallory and Y’da -- the nosy gits -- were not ‘read in.’

“I’m sorry, Bond.  None of this is your fault.  I’m tired and I … no.  Nevermind.  That’s not your problem, either.”  He glanced over his shoulder to glare at Mallory.  “You’ve been through far more than I have this last week.  Let’s get you back to the flat, yeah?”

James nodded wearily and slumped back against the vinyl of the chair’s back as the nurse situated his broken leg on the footplate.  He hated this.  Really _fucking_ hated this, but was too tired to do much about it other than glare at everyone but Q.

“There’s hardly anyone here this late, but I’ll wipe the security footage so that there’s no evidence of you leaving here in that chair,” Q continued, raising his voice in a way that demanded the other two take note on what he was about to say.  “And I know that neither M nor Dr Y’da would ever _think_ of sharing that tidbit with anyone else.”

“Indeed not.  I like my credit rating right where it is, thank you very much.  I’m refinancing my mortgage.” M said drily.

“Doctor/patient confidentiality,” Y’da added, stating the obvious.

“I should _hope_ so,” Q said with a glare for the indignity he knew his agent was feeling and took the handles of the chair from the nurse to push Bond from the room.

Y’da and Mallory watched silently until the pair were out of earshot.

“They’ll be married within a year.” Y’da decided.

“Oh, not so long as that, I think,” Mallory corrected.  “Seven months at the outside.”

Eyebrow cocked, the doctor turned to the spymaster.  “That sure are you?”

“Hundred quid.”

The eyebrow rose higher.

“Fine.   _Two_ hundred quid.”

“Excellent.  I look forward to adding it to my holiday fund.”  

They shook hands on the wager.  Mallory nodded and headed for the door.  He did still have work to do, after all.  

“Gareth,” Y’da called after him, “They haven’t even started courting properly yet.”

“Emmaline, trust me when I say that for all their brilliance, those two men are _idiots_ .  Not only was that courtship, _that_ was foreplay.”

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

“Sorry, Q,” Bond muttered when Q finally managed to settle the man into the bed upon their return.  Q’s Pimlico flat was small, and though it did boast a guest bedroom, he wasn’t about to have the sick and injured agent recover on a spare double mattress that couldn’t even lay claim to a bed frame, so into Q’s bed James Bond went.

Yeah.  Q wasn’t successful in avoiding the images that particular mental picture conjured up, either.

“Sorry for what, 007?” Q asked, popping into the loo to soak a flannel in cool water.  He wrung it out in the sink, folded it into fourths, and tried to pretend that his stumble coming back into the room had everything to do with a loose bit of rug rather than the unexpected sight of Bond’s naked chest.  

At minimum an eight-pack, surely.  

Q’s eyes caught sight of the cashmere jumper where Bond had tossed it at the foot of the bed and was momentarily torn between cursing it and shouting out a halleluiah.  

Instead, Q settled onto the mattress next to Bond’s hip, careful not to jostle the casted leg that lay uncovered and propped up on a pair of pillows atop the dark blue duvet. He pressed the flannel to Bond’s cheeks and then along the sides of his neck before giving it a home atop the man’s forehead. It was an intimate attention but not sexual in nature, though the moans of pleasure elicited from Bond at the cool sensation could quickly send it that direction.

“I hadn’t planned on pushing you out of your bed,” James finally replied.

“Or _into_ it, for that matter, I’d imagine,” Q muttered, ignoring his body’s rather pointed reaction to the sounds Bond was making.  Bond was either too exhausted to respond or deliberately choosing to ignore the not-quite-catty comment.  Bond had heard him, of course.  The man heard everything, but Q couldn’t quite bring himself to care.  He uncorked a bottle of water he had grabbed from the fridge on their way in and handed it to Bond then dug into the pocket of his trousers and passed Bond a paracetamol along with a pair of narcotic painkillers Y’da had prescribed -- again -- for his leg.  

Q helped him sit up to drink the water and set the bottle down on the bedside table when Bond had finished.  He then pulled the duvet to the middle of Bond’s chest.

“The paracetamol should help with the fever, but I’ll check on you again in a couple of hours, Bond.  Get some rest.”

Q stood to take his leave, but his exit was hampered by the hand that shot out from beneath the blanket and grabbed his wrist to pull him back down to the mattress.  “Q, you don’t have to nursemaid me through this whole thing, you know.”

“I have a directive from Mallory and seven days of leave that would indicate otherwise, 007.”  

Bond’s sigh was surprisingly exasperated given his condition.  “Damn it, Q.  I’m trying to say ‘thank you.’”

Q cocked an eyebrow not so much in surprise as in derision. He loved the man, for all that he’d never admit it to anyone, but Q _knew_ him, too.  “You don’t say ‘thank you,’ 007.  It’s not in your lexicon.”

“I do, sometimes.”

“You really don’t.”

“I’m … starting to,” Bond hedged, more question than statement.  “Didn’t I earlier?”

“I know that having the flu can make you _feel_ like you’re dying, but you’re not, you know, so this apparent need to turn over a new le --”

“Q.”

“Yes, 007?”

“Do you _always_ have to make things so difficult?”

“ _Really_ , 007.”  Q’s eye muscles were going to become permanently strained at this rate.

“Q.”

“Yes, 007?”

“Thank you.”  James squeezed Q’s fingers that had become tangled with his own.

Q jumped up from the bed, suddenly uncomfortable by the tenderness in Bond’s tone.  People with licenses to kill didn’t do _tender_ , for God’s sake.   _This_ one least of all.   “Yes.  Cheers.  So glad we had this conversation.  Do get some sleep, won’t you, 007?”

James allowed his eyes to linger on his Quartermaster as the younger man turned down the lamp on the table and beat a hasty retreat for the bedroom door.

“You used to call me James.”  He turned his gaze to the ceiling.

Q stopped short and gripped the edge of the bedroom door in his hand.  “Yes ...  I did.”

“Now it’s only ever Bond or 007.”

Q pressed his forehead to the exposed wood above his hand and closed his eyes tightly against the emotion surging in him at the plaintive tone in Bond’s voice.  The bastard.  The _sodding_ bastard!

“Yes.  I know.”

“Think you’ll ever --” James coughed thrice.  They were bone-rattling.  Once he had his breath again, James swiveled his head across the pillow’s surface  to look at Q, still standing with his back to the room.  “I miss hearing you call me James.”

Q didn’t respond right away to the unasked question.  From many years of close observation -- it was in the shifting tension in the boffin’s shoulders and the manner in which he cocked his head, this way and that -- James knew that his Quartermaster was carefully weighing his options and his words.

“Not … not just yet.”

“But maybe one day?”  James was struggling to keep his eyes open.  His pain, his fever, his leg, the whole sodding mess of it was pulling him under, but he _needed_ to know.  Q looked at him over his shoulder and a partial smile pulled at one corner of those gorgeous lips.  

“Yes.  One day.  Get some sleep, Bond,” Q murmured as he pulled the door shut behind him.

James closed his eyes and smiled.

 


	2. Sick, Wounded, and Damaged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The benefits of communication and close quarters where there's really no escape route.

Chapter Two:  Sick, Wounded and Damaged

 

* * *

 

While Q couldn’t claim that James Bond was the model patient, he certainly conducted himself with far more restraint than Q had ever heard of him using during those times when the Double-O was confined to Medical.  

Most of the first two days Bond spent sleeping.  Well, when he wasn’t kept awake coughing, at any rate.  Thankfully, the narcotics Y’da had prescribed Bond for his leg had the added benefit of working as a cough suppressant, but the effects lasted only so long, usually wearing off well before Bond could take the next pill.  Consequently, Q kept ready for him a thermos of hot tea laced with lemon and brandy.  Y’da would pitch a fit if she knew, but Bond had been self-medicating for nearly a decade, so Q figured if the man’s liver hadn’t failed yet, it probably wouldn’t with Q’s gran’s home brew.  The alcohol was only part of the cure, however.  The tea was a special blend known only to the members of Q’s family, handcrafted in precise measurements from several common tea leaves, herbs, and spices as well as a few that were a bit … harder to obtain.

“It’s surprisingly good,” James rasped after finishing his first cup of the brew.  He’d always been a bit leery of home-remedies.  Far too many of them didn’t work and tasted like shite on top of it.  He said as much and then closed his eyes which had started to hurt again.  

“Yes, well as often as those two properties tend to coincide, they don’t in this case.” Q took the mug from him and capped the thermos, making sure it was within easy reach for when Bond needed more.  “My great-great grandmother would thank you, though, I’m sure.”  

One leg tucked beneath him, Q was again sat on the mattress next to Bond who had woken himself with coughing.  His fever had been running high through most of the day, the paracetamol doing only just enough to keep it from getting too out of control, so Bond had been largely listless or unconscious.  Q looked down at the man.   Complexion wan and drawn against the dark blue sheets, Bond seemed about as far from the virile, powerful, seductive operative he was as it was possible for him to be.  

“Stop looking at me like that,” James muttered, not bothering to open his eyes.

“And just how am I looking at you?”

“Like I’m a dead-man walking.”

Q laughed outright.  “Oh, pish tosh!  At worst, you're only  _ half-dead _ to say nothing of the fact that walking isn’t even on your agenda as it stands anyway.”  Q gently tapped the side of Bond’s cast with the knuckle of his index finger.  “But I know what you mean.  Had the flu myself a few years back, and I can honestly say that I understand why people can actually die from it.”

James hummed a response and nestled further into the mattress; Q took that as a cue to pull the heavy duvet further up around his shoulders.  Bond had been equal parts freezing cold and overheated as his fever waxed and waned through the hours.  Clearly another cold spell was upon him.  

Bond coughed at length again, but it was not as violent as before.  Thankfully, Gran’s medicine was working properly.  Q rested his hand on Bond’s chest, rubbing soothing circles through the duvet as his own Mum had done for him when he was a child.  It was ridiculous.  Bond was a grown man, not a sickly child -- in theory, at any rate -- but the deadly intelligence agent neither protested nor pulled away.  Bond’s breathing eased and after a few more minutes evened out beneath Q’s palm.  

Thinking Bond finally asleep, Q started to get up from the bed.  Bond would likely sleep for at least an hour, and Q hoped to get to the shops before he woke again.  There was no more milk for tea, and he’d run out of tinned soup at lunch.  Q doubted even a dormouse would find a crumb in his cupboards as bare as they were.

“Talk to me,” James said as Q’s weight shifted on the mattress.

“What do you want to talk about?”  He sat back down.

“Like we do on comms … when it’s late … just us.”

Q’s lips twitched with amusement.  Their late night discussions when Bond was on assignment were among some of Q’s most cherished moments.  By necessity, he had needed to lock those memories away during that interminable year when Bond was gone or risk driving himself spare with longing for things that could never be.  When Bond returned, however, Q eventually and very,  _ very _ gradually allowed himself to revisit those memories and the feelings he had always associated with them.  They, as much as Bond’s own actions in atoning for past mistakes, were what had brought their friendship back from the edge of the abyss.  Were what had brought them here, Q supposed.

“Those chats generally start with whatever new intel I have to share with you.  In case you haven’t noticed yet, 007, we’ve  _ both _ been grounded.”

“Doesn’t mean there’s not intel to share, though.”  James smiled weakly and Q saw him roll his eyes beneath closed lids.  “Something I don’t know --” 

“-- Goodness where would I even  _ start _ .”

“-- about  _ you _ , you little shite.”

Q laughed at the exasperated tone in Bond’s voice, but he tucked his leg back underneath him and settled in for a conversation he wasn’t entirely sure he knew how to have.  It was one thing to chat about themselves via a secure link with thousands of miles between them.  Would it be the same?

“Tell me … something you’ve never told anyone else,” James mumbled.

Q sucked in a sharp breath.  Trust Bond to go for the jugular. 

James felt Q stiffen at his side and opened his eyes, hoping his boffin could see that James didn’t intend for him to feel cornered by the request.  Things were good between them again, but sometimes it felt as though their renewed friendship was still standing upon on fragile faery wings.  “Something simple, Q.  I already know you’re afraid of flying.”

Q had been looking away, fiddling anxiously with the cuff of his jumper, but his eyes flew to those of the man in his bed.  “Wait?  I’m  _ what _ ?”  He snorted in disbelief.  “Afraid of flying?! I don’t know where you managed to get that bit of bad intel --”

“But in Macau, Moneypenny told me …”  Bond was confused.

Q rolled his eyes.  “Of course she did.  Bond, Moneypenny all but begged M to let her meet you in Macau.  Wanted to be your backup to make amends for shooting you in Turkey.  I was up to my eyeballs getting things up and running in the Bunkers, so off she popped.  She probably figured telling tales about me would throw you off her scent.  Seems she was right.”

“So you … fly, then?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t twitch my nose and magically transport myself 900 miles to Austria for our meet at the Hoffler Clinic two years ago, now did I?”  

“That show’s a bit before your time, isn’t it?”

“The benefits of a classical education,” Q responded drily.  

He pulled off his glasses and cleaned each lens with the hem of the untucked button down he wore.  “Something I’ve never told anyone else,” he mused.  Q held up the spectacles to the light for a moment and returned them to their home so he could look at Bond directly.  “Okay.  This then.  While I  _ do _ fly, I do  _ not _ swim.”

“You can’t swim?”

“That’s not what I said.  Do pay attention, 007.  I know  _ how _ to swim, but I don’t. I am negatively buoyant. I lack the ability to float.  Sink like a stone, really, so swimming becomes very exhausting.  Treading water is nigh on impossible.  Therefore, I don’t swim.”

Though he looked and felt like shite, Bond still managed to look surprised.  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a -- are you  _ sure _ ?!”

“Of course I’m sure, Bond,” Q snapped, though there was no real heat in it.  “It’s rare, but it’s more common than most people think.  Is that not what you were looking for?”

“No … no, that’s exactly the sort of thing I wanted to know,” James said.  He’d always enjoyed their comm chats, and was so thankful that he and Q had reached the point again where they could talk so intimately when James was on assignment.  He’d missed it -- missed  _ Q _ \-- terribly when R had been his handler, but James had understood why Q had needed to distance himself.    

James wanted to continue the discussion, but his energy was flagging.  His eyes fell shut.

“Sleep a bit more, Bond, and maybe later you might feel up for a shower,” Q suggested.

James’ eyes popped open and Q didn’t even try to contain his chuckle at the hope that he saw in those blue depths, a spark that was suddenly overtaken by a look of keen discomfort.  “I’m starting to stink, aren’t I?”

“A bit,” Q conceded with a shrug.  “But I’ll have what you need set up and ready to go for you later.  I’ll change the sheets out, too.  No sense having a wash only to lie down in dirty linen.”

Though his eyes were starting to ache again with fever, James took a moment to really observe his Quartermaster.  Q looked exhausted himself.  James wasn’t entirely sure how Q was spending his time whilst James was asleep, but he did know that everytime he opened his eyes, Q was there, ready to help, or talk, or comfort in anyway he could.   

Just like always.

And  _ that _ had been the grit on the lens.

When James left London and MI6 behind after Westminster Bridge, he had done so with the intent of never returning to this life.  Truly.  He was done.  He was tired.  He had accomplished what he had set out to do in helping to keep England safe from those who would destroy her.  Well, mostly.  Threats would always exist, but no one could say that James hadn’t done his fair part. He had earned his rest and had chosen to carve out a new life with a woman he cared about.

That had been his plan.

Madeleine had been lovely.  Intelligent. Contemplative.  Passionate.  Adventurous.  Their days together had been filled with new adventures or no adventures.  They went wherever they wanted to go and sometimes nowhere at all.  They largely avoided those places and regions where 007 had been most active, where the threat to their safety would be most pronounced.

“That might not leave us with many places to go,” James had joked as they sipped cocktails on a private beach in Greece.  “I was everywhere.”

But the world was a big place, in spite of all of that.

Iceland. Madagascar. Australia. Argentina. Japan. Bali.

With Madeleine at his side, James Bond was able to effectively leave his old life behind and focus on the new.  He hadn’t even thought about MI6 -- the missions, the paperwork, the people -- in nearly a year.

And then they went to Aspen.

James had been to the United States more than once over the years, but his missions had always taken him to the coasts:  Miami, New York City, Charleston, Houston, San Diego, Portland, Seattle.  

Aspen wasn’t Gstaad, but it certainly had its charm.  The accommodations were satisfactory, the nightlife engaging, and the powder excellent.  Madeleine joined him on a few runs, but she largely relaxed in the Lodge reading as she sipped hot buttered rum or partook of the large menu of treatments from the five star spa their hotel boasted.

“A facial seems like a bit of a waste, darling.” James had whispered in her ear as he headed out for another day on the black diamonds.  “You’re too lovely as it stands.”  Madeleine smacked him on the arm but leaned into his kiss anyway.

It was at the end of his first run after lunch that James spotted him.  At first, only from an angle as the man walked away from the base of the slope toward the cafe: tall and willowy, wearing too tight trousers and a, quite simply, horrid jumper; dark, curly hair largely tucked under a knit cap and spectacles that seemed to keep slipping down the bridge of his nose.  

James popped out of his bindings before the spray of snow that had accompanied his abrupt stop had settled back to earth.  He stuffed the skis into the first rack he came across and took off after the man he had seen, grateful for once that he had more than a little practice running in rigid ski boots.

Abandoning years of training that urged caution and stealth, James dodged workmen and service people, families with small children and singles with mates, skiing nuns and -- skiing nuns?!  

James politely pushed past the three sisters who were arguing about which blue slope they were to take next.  A quick glance down the path showed James that he had almost caught up with his prey. The young man had stopped to check his mobile -- of course he had -- and had one hand wrapped around the strap of a messenger bag whilst the fingers of the other scrolled through whatever had caught his attention.  It could be anything, after all.  This was -- 

“Q!  Q, whatever are you doing here in --”  The young man spun around as James tugged at his elbow to greet his friend, but when he saw the face, James dropped the limb as though he had been burned.

“My apologies,” James said, stepping back from the befuddled man with wide  _ brown _ eyes who clutched even more tightly at his bag, as if expecting James to rip it from his grasp like a common thief.  “I mistook you for someone I knew.”

The tension in the man’s shoulders eased a bit, and he offered James a tentative smile before saying, “No worries, man!  Happens all the time ‘round here.  Enjoy your day.  Hope you find who you’re lookin’ for.”  And with a half-gestured wave turned and continued on his way.

James stood in the middle of the path, watching the stranger walk away, struck dumb not by the encounter itself but by the sudden knowledge that until that moment, James hadn’t realised just how much he missed his friends.  No.  Not just that.  How much he missed  _ Q _ .

_ Bugger _ .

Things had come apart rather quickly after that.  

In the four days that followed his encounter with ‘he-who-wasn’t-Q,’ James fell into an introspective strop -- a dicey proposition for any man with a past he didn’t want to examine too closely, but especially true for a former Double-O. 

James tried to put the encounter away from him and focus on the woman at his side.  Focus on the life they were trying to build together, but inevitably James said or did something to anger Madeleine -- sometimes something minor, sometimes not -- and it eventually just became easier for all concerned for James to sequester himself away until he processed through what was eating at him.

He drank.  It was little in comparison to how he had indulged before but certainly more than had been the norm of late.

It annoyed Madeleine, James’ sudden reluctance to go out with her at night.  To speak but a few words when they shared meals --  _ if _ they shared meals.  

“I just need some time to think.”

“About what?”

James didn’t want to explain all the things going on in his head.  How could he even begin to?  No, not to her.

“I’m a doctor, James.  Let me help you with --”

“No!  I don’t want you -- anyone -- picking around inside my head.  I’ll figure this out.  I just need some time.  That’s all I’m asking for.  A little bit of  _ time _ .”  It was the most he had ever said about the state of his mental health.  To  _ anyone _ .   Madeleine was a psychologist, after all.  She should know that you can’t force anyone to reveal things that --

She should have appreciated that.

She hadn’t.

Madeleine went without him.  Angry, he supposed, at his unwillingness, his inability, to let her in.  Night after night, she went to the clubs to see and be seen, staying out far later than she had when they went together.  

His reflections had taken him down many different paths.  Unveiled some inconvenient truths.  Revealed who he was and what he had been.

James wanted to do better.

And that wouldn’t happen with Madeleine.

She  _ was _ lovely.  She  _ was _ intelligent.  She  _ was _ contemplative and passionate and adventurous.  

But she was also shallow and vain and cold and selfish and petulant.  As he sat there, drinking his whisky and thinking about his life, James could see that over their months together, Madeleine had always been more concerned about where  _ she _ wanted to go.  What  _ she _ wanted to do.  How  _ she _ thought James should think and feel and be.  

James had humoured her, as much as he had been able, willing to accede to many Madeleine’s wishes because it was novel -- the new freedom of not  _ always _ having to be the one to make all the decisions -- and for awhile he was content being pulled along by the current rather than always pushing against it.   But when he did push, when James  _ did _ say no -- he was and always would be an Alpha-male, after all -- Madeleine would turn from him in all ways, her silence and cold stares going on for days until one or the other of them capitulated and they moved on together again.  But it had become tiresome, and James knew that he didn’t want to live his life that way.  

James didn’t blame her.  There was no fault to be had here.  James was no prize, himself, he knew, but he did know that he wanted to do better.  

He could stay and try to work it all out with her, but there was one key issue preventing that.

He wanted -- and here was the corker -- James wanted to be the man he had started to become the minute a too-thin, too-smart-for-his-own-good bespeckled boffin sat down next to him in the National Gallery, implied that James was too old and too hide-bound for the espionage game anymore, and then introduced himself as MI6’s new Quartermaster.

What had struck James so powerfully that afternoon on the path at the resort was not just that he missed Q, but that he  _ loved _ Q, was  _ in _ love with Q and James had thrown that away, thrown away their friendship -- possibly the deepest, strongest relationship of James’ life -- for one of thin veneer.  And he hadn’t even known it.

He had traded impervious titanium for rusting steel.  

James could have just left a note.  He could have just left.   

But he wanted to be better.

He waited until Madeleine woke up the next afternoon; she had been out quite late again. 

As she passed him in the hallway on the way to the breakfast nook, James was suddenly thankful for two things.  Firstly, that he had already come to a decision about the future direction of his life; and secondly, that there was another bedroom in the suite, though James had thought it superfluous when they first checked in.  

It was one thing to not care if Madeleine went out on the town without him, but it was entirely different that Madeleine returned to their rooms smelling like stale sex.   James may not have been fair to her over the last four days --  _ four days _ \-- but he hadn’t stepped out on her.  Suddenly, the memories of having shared a bed with her for the last last year turned James’ stomach.   

Thankfully, Madeleine Swann would no longer be James’ problem.

It was as Madeleine started on her first cup of coffee that James shared with her his decision.  She looked at James with her cold eyes as he spelled out his intent.  

“Just be sure to lock up before you leave,” she had said, brushing past him when he had finished and disappeared into her bedroom, her blue silk dressing gown billowing behind her.

James had been on the next flight back to England.

He knew that he would need an ‘in’ at Six.  An ally to support him in his quest to regain his position.  James wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted back in the game, but it would be impossible for him to rebuild his relationship with the Quartermaster from outside the walls of MI6.

The least likely was the only real option.

“Hello, Bill,” James said.  He was leaning against the bonnet of the DB5 -- newly rescued from a storage locker in Cheapside -- outside the Chief of Staff’s local pub, The Rose and Crown.  

Tanner had spotted Bond from halfway down the block and had slowed his pace, but only so that he could prepare himself for the conversation he was pretty sure that was to follow.  He stuck his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and settled in against the driver’s door next to James.  

“I’ll need a damn good reason why I should even consider sticking my neck out to help you, James,” Bill said by way of greeting.  His tone was casual but the underlying tension was there.  

“Q.”

Bill cocked an eyebrow in surprise.  “Finally figured it out, then, did you?  Bloody took you long enough.”

James could see that Tanner knew exactly why James had come back to London.  He had chosen the right ally and said as much.

“I haven’t agreed to  _ anything _ ,” Tanner growled and spun to face James directly, the look in his eyes hard, cold, and angry.  “You left us all in a lurch, cleaning up the mess you left behind, to say nothing of what you did to the Quartermaster.  God, Bond!  I’ve seen you cock up a lot of things over the years, but this …  _ this _ was beyond the pale.  And here you stand, leaning up against the man’s labour of love.  Love, Bond.  For  _ you _ !  And you couldn’t even be bothered with a ‘thank you.’  Sod this!”  

Tanner turned and started to walk away.

“I know.  I won’t try to excuse any of it,” James said quickly.  The words were the right ones for they halted Tanner’s departure.  “Hell, I can’t even make sense of it to myself anymore.  It may have taken me 44 years, but I swear to you that I have finally figured out what really matters to me, and it’s here.  In England.  With MI6.”

“MI6 or it’s Quartermaster?”

“They’re not exactly mutually exclusive.”

Bill leaned in closely to Bond.  His voice was low.  Tense.  Dangerous.  “If you’re saying all this just to lure me in, I swear to  _ you _ that I’ll put a bullet in your head myself.”

James didn’t argue Tanner’s point.  In fact, he didn’t say anything, but he met Tanner’s graze directly, unflinchingly, and hoped that his sincerity came through.

Apparently it did, for after a few moments Tanner took two steps back and shoved his hands in his pockets again.  Once more, he was the amenable, somewhat shy, Chief of Staff, and Bond was struck by the chameleon qualities of the man.  Skills that had served Tanner so well when he had been a field agent, and it reminded James that appearances were just that.  Bill Tanner was just as deadly as any of the rest of them.

“You lost me 300 quid, by the by.  I thought you’d be back four months ago.”

“Then I’ll pay your tab tonight.”  James pushed off the bonnet, crossed the pavement, and held open the door to The Rose and Crown.

“Not just  _ tonight _ , mate,” Tanner said with a wide grin as he stepped past Bond into the pub.

_ I’ll buy Tanner drinks for the next 20 years if Q keeps looking at me like that _ , James thought as he continued to stare up at the boffin sitting next to him on the bed.  

It was that soft look that never lasted long before the man’s innate caustic snark kicked in, but it had been popping up with increasing frequency over the last few days as James recuperated in Q’s bed.

Suddenly a horrible thought popped into his mind.  One that, if true, would completely undo everything James had worked to achieve these last months.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen, Q.  I wasn’t trying to manipulate my way into this situation … into your bed.”

“Whatever are you going on about, Bond?”  Q frowned with genuine confusion. 

“I would have.”  James reached out from under the duvet to take one of Q’s hands in his.  “A year ago, I would have.  I was a manipulative bastard.”

“Not something that has changed all that much, 007.  It’s part of your nature.  It’s part of your  _ job _ ,” Q clarified when he saw the hurt flash in Bond’s eyes.  He looked down at their joined hands and twisted his fingers so that they laced together with Bond’s.  “Not even  _ you _ could contrive something like this,” he continued, indicating Bond’s broken leg and the cold and flu detritus that was scattered about the side table and the rug around it.  

“Go on, rest.  We’ll have you try for that shower in a few hours.”

James nodded weakly and felt Q tuck his hand back under the blankets.  His wool-gathering and the resultant discussion had sucked away what little energy James had left.  He closed his eyes and between one heartbeat and the next was dozing again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for all the comments on the previous chapter! I truly appreciate them.
> 
> If you are so inclined, some comments on this chapter would also be appreciated as a way to stimulate both my creative and physical health. I'm feeling rather like James at the moment, and I'm starting to realize that it may actually be possible to physically cough up a lung. Sadly, I do not have Q's gran's medicine to help me out, so I'm looking to you ... and a bottle of Delsym cough medicine (which is woefully inadequate, if I do say).


	3. Englishmen, or How to Get to the Centre of a Nest of Chinese Boxes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Q's not the only one who knows how to nurture.

## Chapter Three:  Englishmen, or How to Get to the Centre of a Nest of Chinese Boxes

 

* * *

 

 

M opened the door to his office, stepped out into his P.A.’s domain, and handed her a file folder.  “Moneypenny, R has prepared several items that the Quartermaster has requested be delivered; Bond, too, is apparently showing signs of life and could use a few items from his flat,” he said, pointing at the file.  “If you could make arrangements with someone from security to --”

“I’ll take care of it, M.  Security wouldn’t have a clue where to start in that packing box mess of a flat 007 calls home.”

“Excellent.  R has already sent a minion up from the Bunkers. Divert her here instead of the Security offices.  Once you’re done with Bond and the Quartermaster, feel free to take the rest of the day.”  He glanced at his watch, it was already half three.  “It’s not much time off, but --”

“Appreciated nonetheless.  Thank you, M.”

Mallory was heading back to his desk when the former field agent said, “I’d like to put two hundred quid on eight months, if I may, sir.”

Mallory turned, confusion clear on his face.  “I’m sorry.  What?”

“Q and Bond.  Married.  Eight months.”  Moneypenny reached into the lap drawer of her desk and handed him a sheet of A4 paper filled half-way down the page with names and numbers.  “Though, it might not be a bad idea if people started picking specific dates … or at least a date range.  It’ll be easier to ultimately determine who wins the pot if the bets are more precise.”

Mallory pinched the bridge of his nose between the pads of his index finger and thumb in an attempt to ward off the sudden headache that threatened and silently cursed his Chief of Medical.   

“That idea was  _ not _ meant to be widely distributed.”  M shook the paper he held.  “It was unprofessional of me in the first place, and --”  

“Sir, this is what we do ‘round here, and you know it as well as I do.  Bored spies are one thing, bored support staff …”

“Point taken.”  Mallory shuddered to think of the mischief the folks in Inventories or Human Relations might get into.  The Q-Branch minions were bad enough on a day-to-day basis, but at least they were consistent.  The personnel down in Inventories, however, could get downright insidious with their plotting on a slow day.   Two years later, and 008 still twitched every time he saw a set of cricket whites.  

“Besides, if you can think of someone in this organisation who doesn’t have a vested interest in the outcome of  _ that _ particular dynamic after all these years, please do point them out to me.”

Moneypenny sat primly in her chair, hands clasped patiently on top of her desk, brown eyes wide and innocent.  Mallory rolled his eyes.

“Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, Miss Moneypenny.”  He sighed.  “Fine.  But you’re in charge of it.”  He passed the paper back to her.  “Keep it limited to whomever fits on the  _ front _ of that paper.  No side wagers.  No email.  Word of mouth only, and it closes out tomorrow night at half six.  No sense this getting any more out of control than it already has.”

“What about Trevelyan?”

“When’s his next scheduled check-in?”

“Saturday at 0230 local.”

“Very well.  Keep the last slot for him, but  _ no _ other exceptions.”  Bond’s best mate would never forgive them if he didn’t have an opportunity to get in on this particular wager.  “Now, if I may get back to it, I do have a spy agency to run after all.”

Moneypenny waved him off with a double flick of her fingers and a grin.  “Off you pop then … sir.”

“And people wonder why I drink,” Mallory muttered, shutting the door to his office behind him.

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

“It’s brilliant, Q.”  James said, looking down at the neon green surgical latex that sheathed his injured leg from just below his right knee all the way down to his toes.  James had used waterproof cast protectors in the past, but not a single one of them had ever lived up to the hype.  Like all of Q’s inventions, James had no doubt that it would work brilliantly.   

Q chuckled and shrugged his shoulders.  “Thank you. It’s not an exploding pen or a piece of tech that will help you take down a madman bent on usurping the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, but it should help make things a bit easier for you when you have a wash.”  

Bond was sat on the closed lid of the toilet clad only in his boxers with Q knelt at his feet, a position that, if he wasn’t feeling like shite … 

The boffin was double-checking that the waterproof closures at the top of the cover were secure and then ran his hands down the length of Bond’s right leg, ensuring that the vacuum compression of the latex, that essentially shrink-wrapped the cast, was secure. “It has a non-skid sole so you won’t slip, but I still wish you’d reconsider using the shower chair, at least until the fever abates,” Q said to Bond’s knee.  

“I’ll be fine, Q.  Promise.”  

Q looked up at him from beneath the ragged line of his fringe, and James could see concern in the green eyes behind Q’s spectacles.  It wasn’t really a conscious thought that brought the pad of James’ thumb up to soothe the creases of worry that had taken up residence between Q’s brows.  There were more still at the corners of his eyes and along his nasal folds, lines that James couldn’t remember being there when he first met Q four years ago.  He noted, too, a dusting of silver strands scattered amidst the inky curls that stood out under the bright lights of the en suite.  

Q was not yet 35.  Far too young to Bond’s mind to begin showing such signs of age, but the stress of keeping the Commonwealth safe from those that would see her destroyed took its toll on them all in time; James was struck anew by the knowledge of just how hard Q worked to tend to ‘his’ agents, to do what was necessary to always bring them home, and not for the first time since returning to England, James was ashamed of how he had abandoned this amazing man.

Though he was still feverish himself, James felt the heat of Q’s blush beneath his fingers as they skated across the sharp lines of his zygomatic arch before cupping the other man’s cheek in the palm of his hand.  He skimmed his thumb against the fullness of Q’s lower lip which parted from its mate when Q drew in a sharp breath only to exhale it in a huff shaped like James’ name. 

“Bond …”  

There was so much James wanted to say.  He’d never apologised -- not verbally -- for what he’d done, and while he liked to believe that Q knew how sorry he was, how damned  _ foolish _ he had been, James needed to say the words.  He needed Q to  _ hear _ them, maybe not while James was sat in the loo, sticky and rank with his own illness, crippled with a lame leg that may never work right again, but ...

“Q --”

The powerful strains of Pat Benatar suddenly filled the relative quiet of the loo, shattering the moment as Q’s mobile shook and vibrated it’s way across the tile at the men’s feet.  James looked at the floor and saw Moneypenny’s photo pop up on the screen.

James sank back against the tank of the toilet and rolled his eyes, exasperated.  “‘Hit Me with Your Best Shot?’   _ Really _ , Q?!”

The Quartermaster didn’t even have the good grace to look embarrassed.  In fact the look on his face was decidedly smug.  “Eve deserves every girl-power anthem I could assign her, but you have to admit that this one is particularly apropos.”   He picked up the mobile, stood, and accepted the call.  He gestured to Bond and glanced at the large shower tall. “You’re sure?”

James nodded and pulled himself less-than-gracefully to his feet with one crutch.  “Please ask her to add some gyoza to the order, if she would.  I’m a bit hungrier than I thought I was,” he said and began tugging his boxers down with his free hand, trying not to overbalance.

Eve had already dropped off a variety of items to Q’s flat -- the waterproof cover among them -- but her quick assessment of Q’s fridge and cupboards had found them wanting.  Q had never got around to going to the shops. 

“I’ll have some  _ real _ supplies brought by in the morning,” Moneypenny had said, but in the meantime had graciously popped off to the Japanese restaurant around the corner to pick up some steamed rice and miso soup for James and a bit more heartier fare for Q.

“Q?” James had stopped disrobing when he noted that the boffin hadn’t responded to his request, but rather was staring dazedly at James’ bare left hip and buttock.  Q wasn’t quite biting his lower lip, but it was a near thing.  Bond was, quite frankly, chuffed at the glazed look in Q’s eyes and found himself standing a little bit taller in spite of his condition.

“Quartermaster?” James asked again, and he wasn’t the only one.  James could hear Moneypenny’s tinny voice calling for Q through the speaker of boffin’s mobile.  

“Q!”

“ _ What _ ?!”  Q jumped and blinked owlishly and came back to himself, a flush spreading across his cheeks when he realised what he had been doing.  “Oh.  Yes.  Gyoza.  My apologies.  Ummm … a-as you were, 007.”  

He turned hastily and fumbled to shut the door behind him as Bond’s weak laughter followed him out to the bedroom beyond.

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

Three days later, with Bond largely recovered from the flu, but not yet all that mobile on his feet, Q returned to his branch to find that things were relatively as he had left them, with minor exceptions. 

As he read through R’s comprehensive report, Q was gratified to learn that all current missions -- 17 in all scattered among junior, A-Level, and Double-O agents through 11 different time zones -- were progressing as planned.  The Research and Development techs had finished work on the new grenade launchers for three of the fleet vehicles and the laser-guided compound bow for 0011’s mission to Chechnya next week.  

“And the modifications I suggested on the rifle scopes?” he asked R, continuing to scroll through the report on the tablet in his hand.

“In progress, sir,” she said.  “They should be ready for fabrication on Friday with alpha testing on Sunday.”

“It certainly looks like everything is in order here.  Excellent work, Maia.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You’ve done so well, in fact, that I’ve half a mind to send you to this afternoon’s section-chief meeting.”  Q smiled serenely at his second, hands folded on the desktop in front of him.

“Not on your bloody life, Q.”  R laughed as the hopeful look fell from Q’s face.  “If it was just Six, I’d say fine, but you’ll not see me in the water with those soul-sucking sharks from Five.”

Q would have reprimanded R for her insubordinate comments if they weren’t so dead-on accurate. “Was worth a shot,” he said with a shrug.

“So what else do I need to know that’s not in the report?”  There was always something, scuttlebutt, if nothing else.  Information good to know, sometimes critical to know, but that had no place in an official MI6 report.

“Propol won Tuesday’s pub quiz night -- again, but at least she bought drinks this time; Jameson from Analysis, McMann in Human Resources, and Agents Smythson and Hogarth are all expecting, 8, 12, 18, 23 weeks along, respectively.”

Q made note of each woman’s name, but particularly those of the field agents as they would be rotated out of the field and new agents subbed in until after their maternity leaves had ended.  Stella Propol, thankfully, didn’t often go to quiz nights and was the only one at Six who could stand toe-to-toe with the Quartermaster. She chose to play alone rather than with a team, and tended to win when Q -- who was very much a team player when it came to quiz night -- wasn’t present.  

“Double-O Eight and Agent Trulcla had a bit of a row in the canteen yesterday.”

“Not Manchester-U vs. Chelsea again?”  

The look on R’s face said ‘would it ever be anything else?’ 

“Physical?”  Q sighed at R’s nod.  “I’ll pull them both in separately for a chat this afternoon before the section-chief meeting.”  

It wasn’t strictly speaking Q’s job to remind the agents about professionalism in the workplace, but this had been an ongoing issue between the two for years, and if Mallory caught wind of it, he’d have no choice but to suspend them both and that would make Q’s already stressful job even more so as he’d have to reassign no fewer than five upcoming missions depending on the length of the suspension.

“Anything else?”

“No, sir.  Nothing of importance,” R said, for once quite grateful for the fact that she’d always had the ability to make the best use of her ‘honest-looking countenance,’ as Q had once put it.  The betting pool was by far the biggest bit of gossip going ‘round Six, but she’d be damned if she told him about it.

“Excellent.  Well, off you pop then,” Q said with a pleasant grin.  “You’re no doubt eager to get home to that new man of yours.  In fact, take a few extra hours before you come in tonight, I’ll be here late catching up anyway.  I’ll take Trevelyan’s check-in for you.”

R had been halfway through Q’s office door but spun back around as … casually as possible.  “Oh, no need for that, sir.  I’ll be in as usual.  I’ve taken 006 this far, I might as well finish it up.”  R hadn’t taken part in the betting pool this time ‘round; she felt she was a little too close to the Quartermaster for it to be a fair fight against the others, but she’d been recruited by Moneypenny to get Trevelyan’s wager and to act as an ‘impartial observer,’ so there was no way R was going to let Q handle 006’s check-in.

“As you wish.  See you at the start of Night.”  Q turned back to his computer to wade through the dozens of emails sent in the last 12 hours alone.

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

It was nearly half one in the morning when Q finally stumbled back into his flat.  He was mentally exhausted and his lower back hurt so much it felt like dozens of little daggers were being poked repeatedly into his spine.  Such was the case anytime he had a section-chief meeting, and Q was thankful that they were held only once a month.  The clash of personalities and posturing from some of the ‘old guard’ executives in Five and Six always made such meetings contentious and never-ending, nearly eight hours this time, after which Mallory had wanted his own debrief with his people. 

The headache had started to threaten about five hours into the first meeting and had exploded into a full-blown migraine halfway through the second.  Q was nauseated and it felt as though his brain wanted to melt and pour out through his ears.  He was grateful that Bond had turned off most of the lights in the flat, only the bulb over the hob in the kitchen provided any illumination, and Q was about to collapse blindly on the sofa that had been his bed for the last week -- not even  _ he _ had wanted to sleep on that lumpy mess in the guest bedroom -- when a hand grasped his elbow and guided Q to his own room.

“Come to bed, Q,” James said, voice low in his ear.  Q heard the click of a single crutch on the floorboards but otherwise the agent moved silently and eased Q onto the mattress of his bed, opposite of where James, himself, had been reading with a book light on the Kindle.  

James leaned his crutch against the side of the bed, and quickly stripped Q of his cardigan -- a not horrifically loud purple and green striped cashmere affair -- and canary yellow button down.  James tapped Q’s hip, which the weary Quartermaster took as the sign to unbutton and undo the zip of his blue-checked trousers.  Q then found energy enough to toe off his brogues and push off the mattress with his hands so Bond could pull the trousers off his legs, fold them, and set them on top of the chest at the foot of the bed.  

“I shouldn’t,” Q said, flopping back against the mattress, clad only in his vest and pants.  Those bloody section-heads always sucked the fight out of him, not that he would ever show that in front of them.  

“It’s your bed, Quartermaster.  I’ll take the sofa.  Should have done that two nights ago.”  James lifted Q’s legs onto the mattress, and watched as the boffin curled up into a tight ball on the bed.

“Bollocks.  Not with your leg.  Bed’s big enough.  Too tired to care.  Just us here, anyway.”  Q muttered, his normally precise and complex syntax clearly affected by the pain, and James would have found it rather endearing under different circumstances.  

Q grabbed the edge of the duvet from Bond’s hand and pulled it over his head.  It was fully dark in the room, but the moonlight that shone through the window was more than enough to aggravate his headache.

God he hurt.  

Q heard Bond hobble his way to the loo but was so caught up in his misery that he didn’t hear the agent’s return.  James pulled back the edge of the duvet just far enough to ask, “How many pills?”

He had known that Q suffered from the sometimes more-than-occasional migraine -- had even watched him guide 005 through an ambush in Estonia through a particularly nasty one that landed him in Medical after the op was finished -- and had rifled through the medicine cupboard to find the medication he knew would be there.  MI6 doctors were ever consistent with the prescriptions they issued their employees.  

“Two.  Please.”  Q whispered and opened his mouth.

James smiled fondly at Q and popped the pills inside.  James offered the water, but Q chose to dry swallow the pills instead, even the thought of water turned his stomach.

James set the glass on the bedside table and pulled the blanket back over Q’s head.  He then climbed in on the other side of the large bed and rolled over to face the bundle of boffin at his side.

“Sleep well, Quartermaster.”

Q grunted in response.

Thirty minutes later Q grunted again and then moaned, rousing James from the light doze he had fallen into.  

“Q?” James asked, shifting closer to the man.

The lump under the covers shifted slightly, triggering a whimper.

“Can you take another pill?”

Q grunted in the negative.  “Too soon.”

The simple sentence was muffled by the duvet.   

“What can I do?”

“Brain transplant.”

James would have laughed if Q wasn’t clearly still in so much pain.  “I’d rather not.  I’m rather partial to the one you have.”

“Oozing out my ears, presently.”

James did chuckle this time.  “Will you let me try something?  If you can, roll over here in front of me.”

A tousled head of dark hair slowly emerged from beneath the blanket and eventually a single hazel eye was revealed.  It looked at James speculatively.  “Bond?”

“Just do it, Q.”

The hazel eye narrowed, glaring, then closed.  There was shuffling beneath the covers, but soon Q had uncurled from the tight ball of pain he had squeezed himself into and was lying prone on the bed next to James.  It took some maneuvering and several starts and stops depending on the level of pain in his head and the accompanying surges of nausea, but soon Q was situated in the vee of James’ lap, head resting against Bond’s warm, broad chest.   

On some level Q knew he should be a bit more neurotic about this whole situation.  Here he was, pressed intimately to the body of James Bond, the man who was quite possibly the love of his life.  The man to whom he could say nothing about it.  

His current level of apprehension was a five on the Fujita scale.  

Shame that the scale didn’t go to a six … or a ten.  It should be a ten. 

Then Bond began gently carding his fingers through Q’s hair, and suddenly Q couldn’t have cared less.

At the first touch of Bond’s strong fingers against his scalp, Q gasped in surprised pleasure and slumped against the solid form of the man at his back, and as Bond continued his ministrations, Q abjectly failed at keeping his moans of pleasure at bay.

His head still hurt, but the sensations triggered by Bond’s caresses slowly began to override the pain, and soon Q found himself completely relaxed in Bond’s arms.

James nearly stopped before he got started, at least until he correctly interpreted Q’s initial gasp as one of surprised pleasure rather than exacerbated pain.  James varied the pressure and the location of his fingers, all the time trying not to be affected by the quite frankly pornographic sounds that issued forth from the boffin’s lips or the way he slowly became boneless in James’ arms.  As James pressed the pads of his thumbs firmly into the ridiculously tight muscles and ligaments and tendons at the back of Q’s neck, he realised that he loved this man so much that it sometimes felt as though his heart would burst from his chest to seek out a larger space in which to grow.   

Slowly, the pain of the migraine seemed to mellow -- either through medication or massage -- and James felt the tension in Q’s body ease.  The boffin relaxed fully against James’ body, and it wasn’t much longer before gentle huffs and snorts told James that Q had finally fallen asleep.

Careful not to wake the man in his arms by accidentally knocking him with his cast, James scooted down the mattress and rolled them both to the side.  James continued running his fingers across Q’s scalp -- he’d always known that Q’s hair would feel this soft --  but it was more of a caress now than anything.  Self-indulgent.   Sybaritic.  James couldn’t guarantee he’d ever have this chance again, and he wasn’t about to let it go.

And if James indulged in his caresses until he, himself, fell asleep?  Well, only the moonlight would know.

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

Q woke to the early morning light filtering through the window and to the warmth of a long, powerful body pressed up against his back.

Q tensed when he remembered who it belonged to.

“Is your head better?”  The sleep-ragged baritone rumbled in Q’s ear and through his chest.

“Better.  It’s not completely gone, but it’s manageable now.”  

“Good.  That’s good.”  James felt Q tense again in his arms, but as he didn’t pull away completely, James counted that as a win.  “Is this going to be a problem?” he asked, tightening his hold slightly to indicate what he meant.  For all its indirectness, it was the most direct way James had expressed his feelings for Q since essentially moving into his flat over a week ago.  

There had been plenty of yearning glances and meaning-laden pauses between them, especially since that ‘not-conversation’ they’d had in the loo, but they were Englishmen.  More to the point, they were Englishmen who kept secrets for a living.  Was it any wonder then that they were each about as emotionally repressed as it came?  It was just so bloody hard to say it directly.

“Q?”

Q didn’t know if his heart wanted to swell with joy or plummet with despair.  He wasn’t entirely certain what kind of response Bond was looking for, but the fact that the agent hadn’t let him go was a good sign.  They’d been moving toward … something all week.  Otherwise, Q would have jumped out of bed the moment he woke in James’ arms.  Nevertheless, Q hedged his response.  “Would it be a problem for you?”

“Not in the slightest.”  James whispered and then nuzzled the tender skin just below Q’s ear.

Q hadn’t realised he had been holding his breath until it left his lungs in a rush of relief and joy.  Yes.  Definitely joy!  “I think I’m rather content with the arrangement myself, actually,” he replied when he could find words again.

Warmth such as James had never really known filled his chest at Q’s admission, and his nuzzling turned to nips and kisses.  “That’s the most brilliant thing I have ever heard you say, and you say at least five brilliant things a day.”

“Only five?” Q snapped, though it was completely devoid of anger.  “I must be slipping.”

“Not in the least, my dear Quartermaster.”  James pulled Q’s form closer and trapped both of Q’s legs beneath his left, the weight of the cast effectively pinning him to the bed.  Q’s response was to nestle in comfortably and yawn.

“Go back to sleep, Q.  It’s barely dawn, and you’ve a few hours yet before it’s back to work for you.”

Bond’s suggestion sounded idyllic and for once Q allowed himself the luxury of a lie-in.  It was Bond’s arms wrapped around him that cemented the deal.  “Brilliant suggestion, Bond.  Simply brilliant,” he said around another yawn that practically split his face.     

“I have them, occasionally.”

“Please let’s not get ahead of ourselves, 007.”

“Git,” James mumbled once before he slept again, and Q smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for all of you who commented and/or left kudos for the last chapter. :) You're fabulous.
> 
> I apologize if there are any major errors in this chapter. I've gone over it all as best I can, but the cold medication is definitely affecting both my brain and my ability to stay awake. 
> 
> Comments are love, so if you've found anything redeeming in this story thus far, I do hope you'll share your thoughts with me. Even if it's just a few words.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading. I hope that you enjoyed Chapter Three!


	4. Omelettes, Admissions, and Atonement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Before they can move forward to the future, James and Q must first revisit the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies for taking longer than expected to post this next chapter. A comment by a reader made me realize that I was missing something in the storyline, and I needed to address that before posting this chapter. Unfortunately, I never write just one or two paragraphs when I can write an additional three or four thousand words, so here it is.
> 
> Please let me know if you like it. There's one or two more chapters yet to come, followed by a short epilogue.
> 
> I promise, Beili, I'm almost to the artwork!

Chapter Four:  Omelettes, Admissions, and Atonement

 

* * *

 

 

By balancing on one crutch, James had managed to prepare breakfast in Q’s postage stamp-sized kitchen.  The night before he had come to the conclusion that Q was in serious need of feeding up and that clearly take-away wasn’t getting the job done.  Moneypenny had arranged for twice weekly deliveries from Waitrose, so James was able to find everything he needed to make a simple yet hearty meal.  

Q apparently had the metabolism of a hummingbird, for while James often saw him put away prodigious quantities of food -- though not with any degree of regularity, mind you -- Q was so slim that as he held the sleeping Quartermaster in his arms, James had largely convinced himself that if given the chance, he could probably play piano on Q’s ribcage.

It was late morning, and the pair was sat at the small table in the nook off Q’s kitchen with toast, bacon rashers, and a goat cheese and veg omelette sitting on plates in front of each of them.  This was the first time James had ever seen Q just after the boffin had woken up, and James couldn’t help but think back to Q’s arrogant claim from years ago when they first met at the National Gallery:

_I'll hazard I can do more damage on my laptop sitting in my pajamas before my first cup of Earl Grey than you can do in a year in the field._

It had seemed a damned hubristic statement at the time, but in light of what Q had accomplished during the whole Silva debacle, ultimately believable; for all that James had openly challenged and derided his new Quartermaster, the young pup’s confidence had nevertheless impressed and intrigued James, but based on what sat before him now, it seemed as though the truth had finally been revealed.

The Q that sat hunched over the table across from James, still blurry-eyed with his nose buried in the steam of his ‘first cup of Earl Grey’ that was clutched in both hands, wouldn’t be able to wreak havoc on a colony of dust bunnies before his first cuppa let alone do even notable damage against a viable threat to the Commonwealth.  

_Probably couldn’t even find the power button on his laptop._

Two years ago, the surge of emotion that he felt at the -- quite frankly adorable -- sight of the sleep rumpled, barely cognizant genius boffin would have caused James a great deal of discomfort, and while he would never voluntarily talk with a professional, since his experience with Madeleine, James had at least started to talk honestly with himself.  

James was still damaged.  Still broken.  He always would be.  For the first time in his life, however, James felt that in spite of all of the death, all of the betrayal, and all of the overwhelmingly weighty emotional baggage, he knew what direction he was heading in; James could only hope that all that remained between him and a chance at genuine happiness was one final act of contrition.  

“I don’t have many regrets,” James said to Q over the rim of his coffee mug.  

At first it seemed as though Q hadn’t heard James.  Rather, he inhaled deeply from the fragrant steam that spiralled upward from inside the mug.  That was followed by a sip.  Hesitant.  Testing the temperature and the flavour.  A second sip.  Deeper and fuller.  A swallow.  A sigh.

Q cracked an eye open and assessed Bond from beneath one lazy lid.  He rubbed at his temple with the knuckles of one hand as James had seen toddlers do when they’ve been woken from a nap.

“While I --”  Q’s voice caught on the remnants of sleep in spite of the fact that he had been awake -- and James used that word _very_ loosely -- for over a quarter hour.  Q cleared his throat, took another sip of piping hot tea, and tried again.  

“While I normally appreciate a good non-sequitur as much as the next chap, asking me to infer meaning from what would be considered by most experts as an unusually large data set -- considering this is _you_ we’re talking about -- before I’ve even taken a third sip of my first morning cuppa is rather more than I’m capable of at the moment, 007, so do put us both out of your misery and speak plainly so that there’s no room for misinterpretation.  What _precisely_ are you tacking around?”

Clearly, there was a bit more life in the Quartermaster than would appear at first glance, so James continued.

“I don’t have many regrets.  In my line of work, they’re a distraction.”

“And distractions do tend to kill Double-Os rather quickly.”  Q said, straightening up a bit further in his seat and sipping steadily from his mug.  The tea, or perhaps the topic, was waking him up, and it seemed that once that process had started it was much like watching a finely tuned sports car go from zero to eighty in 3.2 seconds.

“M, I’d imagine.”  

James nodded at Q’s assertion, sipped his coffee, and looked into Q’s eyes which this morning seemed a startling green in the few rays of sunlight that shone through the window next to them.  

After a moment, Q dropped his gaze to his tea and contemplated his own past in the scattered, flimsy leaves that swirled around in the dregs.  He had more than a few regrets of his own regarding the deceased spymaster.  

Olivia Mansfield had been a force of nature, one who had pulled Q off a path that would have led to his eventual death or imprisonment and, like she had with so many others before him, set him before a challenge so demanding -- the protection of the United Kingdom -- that he was ultimately reshaped and moulded into the man he was today, with one exception: his hubris.  His arrogance was in large part the source of Q’s guilt over M’s death.  It had taken Q a long time to accept that while Silva had played on Q’s conceit to hack the MI6 servers and provide the former agent the opportunity to escape Six’s custody and set him on a direct path to killing M, her death was ultimately at Silva’s hands.  Not Q’s.  

Nonetheless, in the years since, Q had worked hard to try to temper his arrogance and pomposity, and balance those traits with a bit more humility.  He wasn’t always successful, but Q felt compelled to try to be better so that what happened to Olivia Mansfield never happened again.

Surprisingly, in addition to Bond, Tanner, Moneypenny, and Q had each been remembered in the woman’s will and had been given a small token that Mansfield apparently felt best fit each of them.  

Tanner had been bequeathed a signed football from England’s 1966 World Cup victory over West Germany that had sat in a place of honor in M’s sitting room.  Olivia and her Chief of Staff had shared an almost fanatical passion for footy.

Moneypenny had been given a small platinum brooch shaped like a dragonfly.  Its iridescent wings glittered with tasteful accents of sapphires, rubies, and amethysts.  It had been given to M by her husband on the occasion of their 45th wedding anniversary.  Apparently it had been Eve who explained the symbolism of the dragonfly to M:  change, particularly the change of self-realisation and an understanding of the deeper meaning of life.  Edwin Mansfield had been ill with pancreatic cancer and died only a fortnight after their anniversary.  M had worn the pin almost religiously after that.

Q had been gifted something that he deemed more priceless than gems:  four of M’s journals in which she detailed some of her early years as one of the first female agents in the SIS.  Mansfield had known about Q’s passion for memoirs and personal papers of people such as Churchill, Lord Melbourne, Benjamin Disraeli, Patton, and Eleanor Roosevelt.  Only Q’s security clearance kept officials from the Foreign Office from confiscating or redacting the papers, and the note M had included with the documents indicated that he was welcome to edit the journals for publication if he wished, but that he’d “better not bollocks the whole thing up.  They were a damn sight harder to write than the missions were to complete, and I was shot on three of them.”

Bond, of course, had been given the Jack the Bulldog.  That quintessentially English yet  traditionally kitschy ceramic horror that M had kept on her desk for longer than Q had known her.  It had miraculously survived Silva’s bombing of the River House, and according to Tanner had been the only personal item M had retrieved from the burned out shell of MI6 headquarters.  She had even gone so far as to defy a direct order from the heads of the London Fire Brigade and Health and Safety to do so.  Strangely enough, both officials resigned shortly after their ‘chat’ with the head of MI6.

Bond never spoke of Jack’s significance to anyone that Q knew about, but the one time Q had visited Bond’s Notting Hill flat -- some six months after M’s death -- he had noted the many open boxes containing a wide variety of paintings and sculptures that Bond had had more than enough time to unpack: expensive, quality pieces, each and every one of them.  However, the only ‘sculpture’ that had found a home outside of a cardboard tomb was Jack who sat atop Bond’s mantle.  

That told Q all he needed to know about its significance.

While Q had known and worked with M for years before taking over as the Quartermaster, their relationship, while close, was nothing compared to that shared between the woman and her best Double-O agent.

Bond had returned to active duty on the day he received the bulldog, and Mallory sent him off to Caracas on a mission investigating a potential biological weapons factory that was supposed to last only four days but ended up becoming a three-week cluster fuck that ran Q-Branch ragged providing up-to-date intel and real time support and ultimately sent Bond to five different continents, including Antarctica.

Bond had returned to England in less than stellar condition:  three cracked ribs, a severely strained ACL, second degree burns to his left leg and torso, and a through and through gunshot wound to his right bicep.  He rested only two days before volunteering for a mission to Reykjavik, another mission that ultimately went pear-shaped resulting in further injury to 007 in spite of his ability to work a positive outcome.  Another two months of high-stakes missions followed that, had they continued, would have killed Bond if Tanner, Y’da, and Eve had not interceded with Mallory who was unfamiliar with 007’s skill at hiding his physical and mental condition and had continued to take Bond’s word that he was ‘fine, sir’ for whatever Mallory required of him.

While by no means actively suicidal, Bond’s sense of self-preservation had seemed to be on hiatus while he avoided his grief over M’s death.  No one was entirely certain how he did it -- Psych certainly wasn’t involved -- but after six weeks of mandatory down time as ordered by Medical, James had returned to active duty outwardly healthy, hale, and seemingly in as good a spirits as was likely possible for the recalcitrant agent.  

And though Q hadn’t yet known Bond as well as Tanner, for example, Q could tell that Bond after M’s death would never be the same as Bond before M’s death.  Neither of them would be.

Blame and guilt were powerful emotions, nearly impossible to escape.

“Vesper, too,” James admitted, pulling Q back to the immediate conversation.  He set down his empty cup on the table, smiling slightly at the puzzled look on Q’s face.

“I find that …”

“Shocking?”

Q shook his head and searched for the right word.  “Unexpected,” he decided.  He knew the general details of 007’s involvement with the treacherous treasury officer, but Q had never pressed Bond for specifics, and Bond had never volunteered them.

“Vesper’s path was her own,” Bond said.  He toyed with the utensils next to his empty plate.  “Her … betrayals and her death were result of those choices.”

“What’s to regret, then?”  It wasn’t pushing if Bond had brought up the subject, right?

“That I didn’t see it earlier.  That I didn’t see _her_ earlier.  Vesper died because of her choices, but it needn’t have happened.”

“It’s sometimes hard to see the full truth of a situation when you’re in love,” Q admitted quietly, his mouth twisting ruefully as he tried not to linger on the memories of his own follies of love when it came to the man sitting across from him.  

“That’s always worked out so well for me,” James scoffed.  “You’d think I’d have learned after the first time.”

Q’s heart ached at the look on Bond’s face.  Tracy who had been murdered only ten minutes after marrying a very young Bond.  Vesper who had betrayed him.  Madeleine who … well Q didn’t care to linger on _that_ terribly long.  Even M in her own way.    

“It’s difficult enough living with the regrets I already have, Q, and while I’m pretty sure I’ll rack up a few more before all is done and dusted, the ones I can rectify, I will.  It’s why I came back.”

This was certainly something.  Bond had never addressed his reasons for returning to England.  Q considered his response to this news as he poured more tea into his mug from the pot on the table between them, quickly doctoring it to his taste and sipping carefully at the hot liquid.  

“Well, we’re certainly glad that you did,” he said, deciding on a supportive yet gently chiding response.  “It’s understandable, I suppose, that you’d regret leaving when you did. _How_ you did, but --”

“No, not Six, Q.   _You_ .  I regret having left _you_.”

“What?!”  Q’s eyebrows shot up beneath his sleep-tossed fringe; his exclamation caught somewhere between a shout and a squeak of disbelief.  He had been rising in his chair  in order to tuck one leg beneath his bum as he usually did when sitting at the table and nearly tipped onto the ground in his surprise.  Righting himself as gracefully as he could -- which wasn’t gracefully at all -- Q collapsed back into his seat, the legs of the chair scraping across the wood floor as he did so.  

“Say … that, again, please,” Q said once he had regained a degree of his composure.   He had mopped up his spilt tea with his serviette and Bond’s and the small stack that had sat beneath the teapot.  

James prised the soiled serviettes from Q’s hands and tossed them in the bin behind him.  He purposefully did not acknowledge how his love’s hands trembled as, truthfully, the only thing that was currently keeping James from flying apart was his training.  

They didn’t do this -- this _sharing_ \-- and it was agonizing.   _Necessary_ , but agonizing.  

Emotional conversations were awkward for most Englishmen, but those who worked in espionage had to keep an even tighter rein on how much and what they shared with others lest it be used as a pressure point against them.  One evening shortly before James’ accident in the car park, Eve had caught James staring ‘longingly’ at Q while the boffin waited for their drinks at the bar of their local pub.  When James protested the adjective, Moneypenny had subjected him to a five minute lecture on the ‘Secret Pining of the British Male Idiot,’ a didactic monologue that culminated with a hurried comment whispered in his ear as Q returned to their table in which Eve insisted that, “the only one more emotionally constipated than you, James, is the Quartermaster himself.”

As loud as it had been in the pub that night, James had been pretty sure that Q didn’t heard Eve’s final declaration, and so had been reasonably certain that the Quartermaster hadn’t _deliberately_ spilled the drinks.  After all, Q had been bumped into from behind by a uni student who probably should have stopped drinking two or three pints sooner, but after Eve’s rather brutal assessment on the romantic standstill that existed between James and Q, James would admit to taking a great degree of perverse pleasure in watching Moneypenny pour half a pint of Guinness out of her Jimmy Choos.  

It had been a shame about the Guinness, though.

Unfortunately for James, Eve’s comments lingered longer in his mind than the beer had on her Iris suede pointy toe Anouk pumps -- Yes, all right, so he knew his Choos.  Happy?  -- and once in the private confines of his soulless flat, he ran Moneypenny’s words over and over in his mind until James came to accept that which had been steadily building toward a flashpoint for months; James could no longer allow things to dwell in that half-world where Q and he both tacitly acknowledged that there was _something_ between them -- love, James, it’s called _love_! -- but where neither was willing to make the next move.

James was making the next move.

He grasped his crutches from where they were propped against the worktop next to the hob, got to his feet, and nodded toward the sitting room.  “This may take awhile,” James acknowledged.

Once they were comfortably situated, angled toward one another with James’ arm resting casually on the back of the sofa, James repeated his regret at having abandoned Q to run off with Madeleine and spent the next 30 minutes detailing the 13 months he had travelled around the world with the young psychologist.  

Other than the specifics of the intimacies he had shared with Madeleine -- actions that James himself had difficulty stomaching anymore -- he left nothing out.  From Iceland to Madagascar to Australia, Argentina, Japan, and Bali, James shared it all, culminating with his epiphany in the ice and snow at the base of an American ski slope.

“... but, Q, by far my biggest regret is having hurt you,” James said when he reached the end of what he had to say.  

During the lengthy explanation, both men had scooted closer to one another on the sofa, and James’ fingers brushed against the warm flesh of Q’s collarbone, exposed as it was by the stretched-out neckband of the ancient Darth Vader t-shirt he had slipped into before shuffling into the kitchen earlier.  James wanted to cup Q’s face in the palm of his hand and brush his thumb against the swell of Q’s lips as he had done in the loo a few days before, but James hesitated.  The look on Q’s face was difficult to interpret, and James feared that the only thing he had done was bollocksed things up irrevocably.  

Q had kept his warm, green gaze locked on James during the bulk of the story, but when James had reached the events in Aspen, Q had closed his eyes and dipped his head.  The shallow wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and along the corners of his lips had deepened with pain; pain that lingered even after James’ tale had come to an end.

“Q?” James asked a few moments into the strained silence that had settled between them.

“I don’t understand,” Q said at last.  He opened his eyes and James saw the confusion reflected there.

“What do you mean?”  

“I was hurt, certainly, but logically I shouldn’t have been.  I had no claim on you.  We weren’t … _anything_ more than friends,” Q said in a tone that James _never_ wanted to hear in Q’s voice again.  It was one that James recognized all too well having used it himself after Tracy, after Vesper, after M.  Q was trying to shield himself from being hurt further by divorcing his current feelings from the pain he had suffered when James had left.  

“Q.”  James’ hand moved almost of its own volition; he brushed the back of his fingers along the curve of Q’s brow and down side of his face, eventually letting his hand come to rest over Q’s heart.  “I think we _both_ know that’s not entirely true.”  

Q started at the words, but before he could pull back completely, James quickly but gently -- oh, so gently -- wrapped his other hand around the back of Q’s neck, keeping him close.

“Tracy and Vesper … I fell for each of them before I ever really knew who they were.  Who’s to say what might have happened had Tracy lived, but things with Vesper were doomed before I ever set eyes on her.  You’ve lectured me countless times on the dangers of being reactive rather than proactive in the field -- of not looking before I leapt -- and that’s the way it was with them.  Just the same.  It was that way with Madeleine, too, I suppose.”

Q squirmed at the mention of Madeleine’s name but grew still again as James tightened the grip of his voice rather than that of his hand.  “No, Q.  Please, you need to hear me say this.  She seemed to know me.  Know my fears.  She put into words all the doubts and insecurities I had been wrestling with since M died:  always living in the shadows, hunting and being hunted, always looking behind me, always being alone --”

“But you weren’t alone,” Q protested.

“I know that … now.  Maybe I knew it then, but not on a conscious level.  I’m sure it wasn’t deliberate, but Madeleine had a way of rationalizing the irrational in me, told me the things I thought I needed to hear, but it was all so much smoke and mirrors.  I already had everything I needed and wanted before I even met her in Austria.  I had it with you, but I wasn’t able to see it.”

“Why not?”  James hated the near desperation he heard in Q’s voice, knowing that his actions had caused it.  

“Tracy, Vesper, Madeleine … those relationships burned out even faster than they ignited because I let things get too hot, too quickly.  You, Q … you burned through to me so slowly I didn’t even know it was happening.  What were we?  Colleagues that bantered in person and on missions who became close friends through their extensive, exhaustive conversations during countless late-night stakeouts and assignments.  It took us years to get to that point, to that level of trust, yet like every other personal mistake I’ve ever made, I didn’t _see_ what was right in front of me.  This time, though, I bollocksed it up right well.”   

James pressed his forehead to Q’s and sighed with gratitude when Q didn’t pull away.

“It took over a year, thousands of miles, and a chance encounter on a ski slope for me to realise that everything I needed and everything I wanted I had already had … in you ... my Quartermaster.”

Q’s eyes started to sting but he refused to let the tears fall.  Instead, he scooted closer until he was sat in Bond’s lap, legs wrapped around the Double-O’s hips.  While the position could certainly be called sexually suggestive, it belied the true intimacy of this moment that Q had convinced himself would never come.  

“I knew when I met you that you’d be the end of me,” Q said, his voice low in Bond’s ear.  He closed his eyes and pressed his temple into Bond’s when arms wrapped around him and pulled Q even closer.  “I fell in love with you when you told me to get down into that Tube tunnel and ‘put my back into it.’”

“As far back as that?” Q felt James’ deep baritone rumble through him.

He pulled back from the embrace to see if the wonder he heard in Bond’s voice could be seen on his face.  It was there.  Q pulled off his glasses, set them on the window ledge behind the sofa without looking away from the man in his arms, and pressed his mouth to Bond’s.

Their lips moved languidly against each other’s.  For once, time was endless for them.  It was tender.  Tentative.  Gentle yet demanding.  Neither chaste nor passionate.  Even when their fingers tangled in each other’s hair, the kiss remained unhurried and searching.  Tongues probed but didn’t dip.  Teeth teased but didn’t bite.

It was as every first kiss should be, and completely unlike any James or Q had ever experienced.

“As far back as that,” Q confirmed when they finally parted only to press close again in an embrace that made it difficult to determine where one man ended and the other began.

“I know that we’ve probably each expended our lifetime allotment of emotional discourse in the last hour,” Q continued lazily, “and I certainly won’t expect that we lay our souls bare on even an annual basis, but to be clear so as there’s no misunderstanding on my part --”

“I love you, Q,” James insisted, knowing the impetus behind Q’s question.  “I’m not afraid to say it to you or to anyone who asks.  I trust you and I _love_ you.  It’s unlike anything I’ve experienced before, and I’m sorry that I fucked things up so badly between us.”

“You’re forgiven,” Q said with a brilliant smile before pressing his lips to Bond’s once more.

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

The next month passed by with surprising speed and by the middle of March, Bond had started his rehab; his cast and crutches had been replaced with a walking boot and stick which made him significantly more mobile.  

Since he wasn’t able to drive yet, Bond had started making use of the Tube to get around London.

“Desperation can make a man do the most surprising things,” Q quipped one afternoon when he caught sight of the Oyster card in the agent’s wallet.   

“Oh, bugger off,” James growled.  The man would never blush -- Q was at times convinced that all Double-O agents had that ‘tell’ surgically removed upon achieving Double-O status -- but a decidedly sheepish expression crossed Bond’s face as he hobbled down the hall to put the kettle on.

They had continued to share Q’s bed.  Each night -- or at least on those nights when Q was able to come home to sleep -- they always started off on separate sides of the bed, but by dawn found themselves wrapped around one another in some form or fashion.  

Q loved the sensation of waking up in Bond’s arms, but it was those mornings where he found himself as the ‘big spoon’ that Q really adored.  Having Bond nestled in his lanky arms, snoring lightly, for all intents and purposes dead to the world … _that_ level of trust humbled Q and rarely did he gaze upon such a sleeping Bond without tears welling in his eyes.  He was such a sap.  He’d never reacted this way in the past.

He was well and truly in love.

While their bed sharing was clearly not platonic, neither was it all that sexual.  There were playful nips and nuzzles and licks and kisses, but never anything below the waist.  It was the most bizarre thing Q had ever experienced in any relationship he had ever had, of which there were admittedly few, but this was _James Bond_ , world-renowned rake, seducer of women and men from Shanghai to Seattle, Auckland to Aberdeen.  

Bond was in his Quartermaster’s bed on a nightly basis, yet he was almost Victorian in his attentions, at least in comparison to what Q knew Bond was capable of when it came to sex and seduction. There was passion to be sure, and what the man could do with his lips and tongue was positively profane, but it was never too much.  Bond clearly had his reasons for proceeding as he did, and as Q felt … well, he supposed _cherished_ was the best word for it, he didn’t complain -- God no! -- and moderated his responses and actions accordingly.  

Q wanted more, and he didn’t press the unspoken but clearly established boundaries, but he was surprised that Bond didn’t either.  Several weeks into their new status as … whatever it was they were, Q asked that very question and was surprised when Bond didn’t hesitate to give his response.

“I’ve always rushed into relationships and they’ve always turned out badly.  I don’t want to screw this up.  It’s too important.   _You’re_ too important.  We’ll get there.”  

Q melted.

Bond pressed a soft kiss to Q’s forehead and returned to his book, his 21st since Q had handed him the Kindle weeks ago.

It was a good thing Q was already lying down on the sofa with his head in Bond’s lap else he might have collapsed then and there.  He had been coding on his tablet, but his mind had shut down, completely overridden by the reaction in his heart.  

He was useless for the rest of the night.

For all that, however, Q felt a rising apprehension with the conclusion of each of Bond’s physical therapy sessions.  

Bond could have returned to his own flat when the cast came off, yet somewhere along the line, Q had given the man tacit permission to stay.  And stay he had.  More of Bond’s clothes -- no suits yet, the boot ruined the line of the trousers -- hung in the wardrobe next to Q’s, his shaving kit, complete with its cut-throat blade, sat on the countertop next to Q’s far more pedestrian safety razor, and the agent’s laptop and tablet were often found charging next to Q’s on the desk in the spare room.

However, Q couldn’t help but think that there was a significant difference between switching out a cast for a boot and therapy and being released from medical care altogether.  They had said nothing to one another about what came ‘after’, and to say truth, Q didn’t even know how to broach the subject, but each morning when he woke in Bond’s arms, that tiny bit of Q that worried that ‘after’ would never come, grew larger.

On the days he took therapy, Bond rode in with Q to Six, the boffin behind the wheel of the DB5, handling it as if he had been born there.  “One has no business building -- or in this case, _rebuilding_ \-- a performance vehicle if one doesn’t know how to drive it.”  He was first off the mark when the signal turned, pulling ahead and into the lane of the car next to them to make a sharp left at the next intersection.  They were out well before the Congestion Charges took effect, but things were getting busier, making Q’s move that much more impressive.

“Should get you out on the open road, see what you can really do.”

“No.  That’s really not advisable.  It’s best that you’re left with the illusion of your advanced proficiency in this area.”  Q said primly, pressing down on the accelerator and switching gears as he continued to maneuver deftly between the cars of the increasing early morning traffic.  

He took the tight corner into the MI6 car park at twice the recommended speed and slid the car into its parking space without even a hint of squealing tyres.  Bond was nevertheless appreciative of the quality of the shocks and the suspension Q had installed during the Aston Martin’s rebuild.  Otherwise, James might have found himself halfway out the door before it had even opened.

“You may be right,” James muttered as he unfolded himself from the passenger seat and pulled his walking stick from the back of the car to limp toward the lift, patently ignoring the spark of mischievous pleasure that danced in Q’s eyes.

Bond usually rode home with Q on therapy days, too.  Once he was done with those ‘sodding torture masters’ in Medical, James would ascend to HQ proper to harass Tanner or chat with Moneypenny and any Double-Os not on assignment, but the bulk of his time was spent camped out on the futon in Q’s rather tiny office, reading.

He bothered the Quartermaster but little.  Strangely content with his book, occasional bouts of conversation when Q found himself with time to work at his desk, and an increasing use of innuendo once Q started to look at him strangely, convinced that Bond had been replaced by a doppelganger, and a freakishly sedate one, at that.

They were sat together as they were most afternoons at Six:  Q at his desk working on whatever code or project or report demanded his attention at that moment, and Bond on the futon, Kindle in his hand or at his elbow, though Mallory had recently pressed James into service evaluating the field reports and suitability for advancement of many of the junior-level agents.

When R entered the office, she only just managed to suppress her smile at the cosy picture the two painted.  It was positively domestic.  Eve would appreciate the update.  While the betting pool had been officially locked down for months now -- as Mallory had insisted -- that hadn’t stopped people from increasing their initial wagers as the relationship between the Double-O and the Quartermaster heated up.  The last time R had checked, the pot was approaching £50,000.  

“R,” James murmured in greeting as Q’s second passed in front of him.  

“Good afternoon, 007,” she said genially and turned her attention directly to the Quartermaster.  “Here’s the final report on the structural integrity of the outer embankment walls of the Bunkers after last week’s explosion.”

“Excellent.”  Q quickly read the precis at the beginning of the report and then began skimming through the specific details of the narrative as well as the provided photos of the damage done at the scene when a luxury yacht travelling up the Thames exploded after the engine room caught on fire.  Only the crew was aboard at the time, and had no choice but to abandon ship when it became apparent to them that they could not control or put out the fire.  The fire had burned hot and fast, and the London Fire Brigade had not reached the yacht when it slammed into the embankment just downstream from the hidden dock that provided access to Q-Branch and exploded on impact.   Though the final report was still weeks away, the initial investigation -- a joint effort between NSY, MI5, and MI6 -- indicated that the fire and resulting explosion was caused by faulty maintenance parts installed three days prior and not an act of terrorism.

Fortunately, the ship had been travelling late at night when both land and water traffic along that stretch of the Thames was light, but the yacht had been destroyed and the damage done to the embankment was substantial.

Q had been on comms that night, guiding 004 through a mission in Midland, Texas and had felt the explosion from the bullpen, over a quarter of a mile inland.  Passing off 004 to R -- who had been working late on a few projects -- Q had locked down the labs closest to the embankment and cordoned off the entire area until the structural integrity of the tunnels closest to the explosion could be determined.  

“Minor seepage in sections K, L, and M of Tunnels 6 and 8,” R stated, referring to her own copy of the report as Q flipped through the photos taken at the scene.  The digital copies would be uploaded to his personal server later, but this was a place to start.  “Containment is a bit shakier in section E of Tunnel 7, so the engineers recommend moving everything out of the acoustics lab and the fabrication shop until they can repair the damage.”

“And the labs in Tunnels 5 and 9, and 11?”  Q asked, he hadn’t reached that part of the report, yet, his focus now on the maths of the engineers’ recommendations.

“The tunnels are structurally sound, so there’s no need to move anything from those labs or storage.”

Q sighed with relief at that news.  The terminus for both Tunnels 5 and 9 was just west of the accident site, and they could have easily been compromised by the explosion.  They contained the biomedical and ballistics labs, respectively, and the thought of having to move any of the equipment, to say nothing of the experiments and weaponry currently under development, was nightmarish.  Tunnel 11 ran parallel to the Thames but a bit farther downstream from the site, and its various alcoves, nooks, and crannies were largely devoted to storage cupboards and countless pieces of inventory, though there was an empty laboratory that could be pressed into service if necessary.  

“The plan is to start construction in a fortnight, but if we can get the engineers in there sooner, the happier I’ll be,” Q said, setting the report to the side and turning his attention to R.  “Please put together a master plan, if you would.  Start with what needs to be moved, how much, and the like.  We have space to put things, but I don’t know if there’s enough to put it all together in the _same_ place.”

“Do you think we’ll have to shut those facilities down for the duration?” R asked with a frown.

“Bugger, I hope not.”  The timeline for repairs was estimated at six to eight weeks.   Research and Development could not afford to have those resources unavailable for that amount of time.  It was a legitimate security risk to the country as it limited the tools available to its field operatives.  Q pulled his glasses from his face and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.  

Q spent the next 15 minutes outlining his ideas for a temporary move to the larger spaces in Tunnel 11.  R took copious notes, though if anyone else tried to decipher them, he or she would be completely lost by the apparently random organisation pattern.  However, R, having long ago learned to adjust to her boss’ rapid fire instructions and seemingly tangentially connected ideas, always knew how to precisely connect those intellectual dots.  Bond offered up a few insightful suggestions of his own, of which the Quartermaster seemed inordinately pleased.  

“I won’t be of much help,” he said, gesturing at the black CAM boot on his leg, “but I’ll rally the field agents who aren’t already on assignment.  Rand, Gemma, and Thomas are still on R&R?”

“Another ten days, minimum, yes,” Q confirmed with a nod.  The three Double-Os -- One, Five, and Eight -- had each finished up rather perilous missions in the last three weeks and had been put on mandatory recuperation time, much to their irritation.

“You get the plan together, R, and I’ll get the agents to help move it all.”  James turned his attention back to his Quartermaster and felt his own smile pull at his lips at the appreciative look that crossed Q’s face.  “It’ll be done within a week, Quartermaster.”

R left a short while later, a pleased half-smile on her face that Q wasn’t entirely convinced was just about the notes in her hand.

James had largely returned to the reports he had been reviewing, though he had kept one ear on the conversation should he have anything new to offer.   

Q returned to his coding, though James noted it wasn’t with the single-minded focus as before -- Q’s keystrokes were slower, and James was pretty chuffed to know that he’d probably be the only one other than the Quartermaster to actually notice the difference.  

Eventually, though, the man’s fingers slowed noticeably and eventually stopped altogether.

“What’s on your mind, Q?”  James asked.  He flipped the page he had been reading and skimmed the latest fitness report scores for Agent Krista Lear, middle name ‘Chandra’.  Dear Lord!  What _had_ her parents been thinking when they named the girl?  Weren’t there laws in place to prevent such things?

Q peered at Bond over the lid of his laptop.

“You’re different. I expected that you’d be bouncing off the walls by now.  You’ve never done well with inactivity, but you seem ...”  

“Seem?”

“Content, I suppose,” Q huff of a laugh was more about the inadequacy of the word.

“Doesn’t seem quite right, does it?” James admitted as he continued the skim the file in his hand.  “It’s odd, but always before I’d start to feel this … I don’t know, this apprehension or anxiety that got worse the longer I was out of the field.  That if _I_ wasn’t out there, all hell would break loose, and I’d be helpless to do anything about it.”

Q could completely understand where Bond was coming from.  

Q had worked himself into serious illnesses on more than one occasion because he couldn’t or wouldn’t relinquish control of a mission.   The last time he had done so, in the days immediately following the disaster with SPECTRE, Q nearly suffered a heart attack when he allowed his electrolytes to get completely out of balance.  Not an easy thing to do, letting it get to such a critical level, but in the chaos of those days Q had neglected to eat anything or drink much more than tea and had somehow managed it.  He became the first in the annals of MI6 to have three different physicians chew him a new arsehole at the same time, once Q had finally stabilized, of course.

He had since been put on a _very_ short leash with multiple failsafes in place -- two minions on each shift, R, and, ultimately Moneypenny -- to ensure that he had enough rest, food, and drink so that he never got close to such a thing again.

It wasn’t hard to imagine that such a single-minded determination would be worse for a Double-O as they often held the safety and security of the world itself in their hands.

“But you’re not feeling that way now.”  It wasn’t a question.  Q could see that it wasn’t an issue, and that was what was so strange. “What’s changed then?”

James paused in his reading but didn’t immediately look up at his Quartermaster.  When he did, Q saw something he never thought he’d see on the man’s face.  It was incandescent.

“I’m _happy_.”

It took all Q’s emotional strength to keep the tears at bay.  He cleared his throat once, then twice before asking the question that had been keeping him up at nights.

“And … and if the rehab isn’t enough to permit your return to the field?”

“You want to know if I could be content without risking my life every other day?  If I could still be happy?”

Q nodded cautiously.  He couldn’t speak; his throat felt choked by the knowledge that his entire life could change with Bond’s next words.

James piercing eyes never left Q’s, and the Quartermaster felt as though they saw right into the heart of him.  He’d never felt so exposed, so vulnerable …

So loved.

James smiled.  “I think that I would be, yes.”

Later that night as they were curled around one another, each caressing the other’s limitedly exposed flesh, in what Q now considered _their_ bed, James whispered in his Quartermaster’s ear.  “I want to be with you, but until this bloody boot comes off …”  

Q chuckled and ran his fingers through his agent’s hair as James scooted down the bed and rested his head against Q’s bare stomach.  James was still a bit cross that he had been given medical clearance to remove the boot for showers, _only_.  “Yes, things would be a bit awkward, I suppose.  I mean there are ways around it, but that degree of medical hardware really doesn’t set the right mood, does it?  Right, then.  When is your final evaluation?”

“Three weeks from tomorrow.”

“In three weeks, then.”  Q ruffled Bond’s short hair and tugged playfully at his exposed earlobe.  Q _adored_ Bond’s ears.  

James smiled against Q’s flat stomach before pressing a kiss to his navel, teasing the outie with his tongue.  Q gasped and groaned with pleasure at the sensation.  Q had never considered his belly button an erogenous zone.  

Oh how things could change with the right man.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to all who commented or left kudos on the last chapter. I appreciate all of your words and the time you took to read this bit of fiction.
> 
> Further comments are always appreciated. I check my email first thing in the morning, and seeing notification of comments in my inbox makes for such a fabulous start to my day.
> 
> I hope that you all enjoyed this chapter. Let me know. :)


	5. Another Brick Out of the Wall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James gets his final diagnosis from Medical while his Quartermaster finds himself caught between a lack of rocks and a hard place.

Another Brick Out of the Wall

 

* * *

 

 

“Well … it worked.”  

“Yes, Ms. Witkowski, if your goal was to liquefy the target’s internal organs, it was quite the success, but seeing as how our objective is to merely  _ incapacitate _ in order to capture for later questioning, turning the target into something resembling pot noodles that have steeped too long makes all that rather a moot point, don’t you think?”

Q looked down at the remains of the test subject -- a dummy made from ballistics gelatin, normally a rather sturdy compound -- and inwardly cringed at the mental image of what it would look like if it had been actual flesh and blood.

Q was  _ definitely _ off pot noodles for the foreseeable future.

They had been testing a new narrow-spread, handheld ultrasonic disruptor, similar in purpose to those used by the military but infinitely more portable for those situations when proximity was the order of the day.  April Witkowski had modeled her design after the weirding modules from Frank Herbert’s  _ Dune _ , and the device used by Obadiah Stane in the first  _ Iron Man _ movie.  It was no secret that Q had a love of turning science fiction into science fact when it would benefit his agents, and with the team of technological and creative geniuses he had assembled, fiction became fact more often than not.

Clearly, however, there was much still to be done with this project.

“A bit much then?” April asked, not in the least bit put off by the Quartermaster’s sarcastic retort.  To a person, the minions appreciated their boss’ direct approach.  They always knew where they, or their ideas, stood with him. 

“”Twould seem.  Rerun the maths on both the frequency and the intensity of the waves.  I’m confident that you’ll be able to make this work.”  Q toed one of the more ‘solid’ bits that remained of the dummy and immediately regretted it.  He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and stooped to wipe the goo from the tip of his brogue.

It was then, as he was getting ready to stand back up, that Q saw it.  

Water. 

It was seeping in from the base of the exterior wall that ran along the Thames.  This portion of Tunnel 11 was largely subterranean and as such lay below the waterline.   Q crossed to the wall and knelt again, trying to determine the degree of seepage and whether or not they would need to move the acoustics lab again.  He hoped not.  Even with the help of the agents and R’s brilliantly organised plan, the whole thing had been an exhausting venture, and not one Q cared to repeat unless he absolutely had to.  Especially considering that the MI6 engineers had deemed this tunnel structurally sound only a fortnight ago.  

Q wedged the fingertips of both hands into the seam between two of the pieces of soundproofing foam the minions had installed to prior to the move, and prised first one panel and then its neighbour from the wall to get a better look at what he was dealing with.

As he set the second panel to the side, a small piece of brick about the length of this thumb broke free from the wall and fell to the ground at Q’s feet.  Q raised his eyebrow, silently assessing the bit of masonry.  He then ran his index finger along the seam of mortar from which the piece had broken, and it came away wet.  Q looked over his shoulder at April who stood there looking back at him in confusion.  He could see that her thoughts echoed his, and he could also see the sonic disruptor that she still held in her hand.  

The deductions piled up one on top of the other rather quickly after that.    

Last month’s explosion … today’s ultrasonic test …

_ Oh bugger! _

_ Idiot! _

Q jumped to his feet when a second piece of brick, three times the size of the first, crumbled off the wall.  It was followed by another and another, and Q watched in mute horror as cracks and fissures split still more mortar and brick and suddenly seepage was the least of Q’s worries.

“Shit!  Shit!   _ Shit _ !  Get out!  Get out of here!” Q shouted at April just as a section of the wall half the size of his desk broke loose.  It was followed by a torrent of water that knocked the Quartermaster from his feet, swamping him, and sending him careening across the floor of the lab until he crashed violently against the base of a storage cupboard against the opposite wall. 

Q struggled to his feet, the force of the water and the ringing in his ears making it nearly impossible for him to stand upright.  His glasses had been knocked from his face, and Q struggled blindly against the rapidly rising water in the direction of lab’s secure, sliding door.  

The door that April was trying, unsuccessfully, to open.

“I can’t get it open.  The controls are fried.  Seems our dummy and the wall aren't the only things that liquefied,” she snapped, and Q could hear the self-recrimination in her tone.

“Enough of that!”  Now was  _ so _ not the time.  

The door had been installed during the original refit after Silva destroyed the River House, and as they hadn’t known at the time exactly how the space would be put to use, a bomb-proof, water-tight door with a biometric scanner had been installed.  If the controls weren’t working, there was no way they were getting out of the lab without help from the outside.

“Is your mobile dry?” Q demanded, running a hand through his hair to push the sodden mess out of his eyes.  His phone was soaked through along with the rest of him.  April nodded.  “Give it here.”

April activated the mobile, her fingerprint bypassing the manual code, and she handed it to Q.  He was grateful to discover that she, too, had a short cut programmed in.

“Maia,” Q said in a surprisingly calm voice when the call connected to his second-in-command.  “We have a bit of a problem.”  

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

“The films indicate that the bones have knit together about as well as can be expected considering the type of break and other mitigating factors …”

“My age.” 

“Yes, but mostly the mileage.  Let’s face it, Bond, 44 is nothing if you’re a primary school teacher or a Tube driver, but it’s an entirely different situation for a Double-O.  It’s why we recommend such an early retirement age.”

“For those of us who make it that far.”  James shifted slightly on the examination table.  He certainly never planned to live long enough be a pensioner, but here he sat, eleven months shy of 45.  Would he be pulled out of the game early?  That was the question of the day … of the last several months, really.  He had told Q that he’d be okay, content, happy even, if his career ended here, and he had meant it.

For the first time in his life, James felt as though anything was possible, so long as Q was at his side.  

But did that include continuing to make a difference?  He couldn’t just sit idle.  Q was right.  Sooner or later the stress of inactivity would get to him, and he would turn self-destructive, something that had never good for him, or his relationships.

Q had reassured him as best he could:

_ As if I’d let you get away with that behaviour anymore, Bond.  I’m not some shrinking violet unwilling to call you out when you’re being an overbearing prick.  If memory serves, I’ve done that more than once on comms while you’re on a mission.  If you think I’m not ready to do the same in our personal life, you have another think coming.  Besides, I’m not above such ridiculousness myself, loathe as I am to admit it, and I’d expect you to do the same with me.  _

Q had gone on to say that with the exception of James’ one ‘Lapse in Judgement’ -- their polite term for James’ 13 month ‘retirement’ with Madeleine; proper noun with capitals, inverted commas, and all -- they had long since established the foundation of a good, even intimate, working relationship based on mutual trust, and that was a better starting place than most personal relationships could claim to have.  

_ And I do trust you, you idiot.  _

No ‘again’ was even implied.

Doctor Y’da sat on a low stool in front of James and gently twisted his leg this way and that, checking the flexibility and movement of the joints, ligaments, and tendons.  He had been largely out of the boot for the last week, wearing it only when he was on his feet for extended periods of time.  He still needed the walking stick, unfortunately, but his limp had improved over the weeks.

“So how does it feel, then?” Y’da asked.  Poor timing, James thought.  She had looked up at him just as she began manipulating his ankle and caught him when he tensed his jaw in pain.

“Hurts,” James admitted reluctantly, and it did: there was the occasional sharp, piercing pain as well as the constant deep ache that ran from his knee to his toes.  Sometimes the medication took care of the pain, sometimes it didn’t, and James really didn’t like the idea of having to rely on pills for the rest of his life.  Nonetheless, Q had insisted James be honest with the doctor during this appointment, and he wasn’t sure which hurt more, the leg or the truth of it.

_ It won’t do you a damn bit of good if you lie to Y’da to get yourself back into the field only to have your leg blow out in the middle of a mission, 007.  If you get yourself killed because you’re an idiot, I promise you that I  _ **will** _ find a way for the living to haunt the dead. _

If anyone could make such a thing happen, it would probably be Q.

“How badly?”  Y’da asked.

“About a five.”

“On the comparative pain scale or the ‘James Bond’ pain scale.”

“Mine.”  Y’da took the grunt that followed as Bond’s acknowledgment of how well she knew him, though he wished it were otherwise.  

“Well, that’s  _ notable _ .  The most I’ve ever heard you admit to before was a two, and that was after we pulled a chest tube out of your sorry hide.  I  _ know _ how much  _ that _ hurts.”  She ran a hand through her short grey hair. “Can’t say I’m surprised, but I’m not thrilled with it either.”  She eased his leg back against the side of the exam table and reached for his medical file.  James slipped a woollen sock back over his foot and tugged down the leg of his jeans as she flipped through the reports.  

“Your therapy demons -- yes, I know that’s what you call Dana and Johan -- are pleased with your progress, but they’d prefer you take a few more weeks of sessions.”

James huffed.  “Can we stop talking around the issue, Emmaline?  Is another three or four weeks going to matter?  Will it get me back in the field?”

Y’da sighed but met his piercing gaze directly. “It’ll strengthen things up, certainly.  Likely decrease your need for that stick, but … no.  I don’t think it’ll be enough to get you back into the field in the way  _ you _ would want to be back in the field.  I’m sorry, James.”

For nearly a minute, the only sound in the room was the crackling of the paper beneath Bond’s hands as he repeatedly gripped and released the edge of the table.  He closed his eyes and took several deep breaths, but when he opened his eyes again, Y’da was surprised by the acceptance she saw there.

“You knew,” she said.

“Well, as Q likes to say, ‘it was statistically likely’. I accepted the possibility.  The  _ probability _ .  I don’t like it.”  James laughed hollowly and stared off into the middle distance.  “When I left … before, it was because I was tired.  So bloody tired of  _ everything _ , or I  _ thought _ I was.  But since I’ve been back,” he trained his eyes back on the doctor.  “There’s still so much I feel I need to do.”

Y’da held her breath.  Unwilling to say anything.  Unwilling to even move lest she spook him, for James Bond didn’t  _ do _ this.  He didn’t share what he was thinking, at least not with anyone that she was aware of.  If this was a result of his relationship with the Quartermaster, it was one of the most amazing things she had ever witnessed.

When it became clear that Bond was waiting for a response of some kind, she replied, “Only a small percentage of those who work for MI6 are agents and Double-Os, Bond, yet most of rest of us are vital to the work that takes place in the field.  You’re only truly done if you  _ choose _ to be.”

“You sound disturbingly like Q,” James rolled his eyes though his voice was oddly respectful.  

“Yes, well your Quartermaster is a rather wise man for all that he’s the same age as my eldest.”

“ _ My _ Quartermaster?”  

It was Y’da’s turn to roll her eyes.  “Double-O Seven, where you’re concerned, I see my Hippocratic Oath more as a set of guidelines, so don’t think I won’t hit you if you continue to be an idiot.”  

She smiled at Bond’s sudden bark of laughter and stood up.  “I’ll order another three weeks of physical therapy, and I hope you’ll take them.  I’m not kidding when I say that it will reduce your need to use the walking stick.”  She crossed to a cupboard along the far wall and pulled out a garment bag from inside.  “Q brought this in for you this morning. He said you’d want to change as soon as you heard I’d released you from the boot, which I am.  I hear it completely ruins the lines of a bespoke suit.”

Bond practically grabbed the bag from the doctor, unzipping it to find his navy blue with light blue pinstripe suit.  He was pretty sure he had left this particular Tom Ford hanging in the wardrobe in  _ his _ flat in Kensington.

“Meet me out front once you’ve changed,” Y’da said from the doorway.  “I’ll have a few prescriptions for you, non-narcotic, but they should help with the residual pain.”

“Emmaline.”  The doctor stayed at the sound of her name.  She could see the ‘thank you’ in his eyes, but took pity on him.  Bond had crossed enough emotional Rubicons for one day.

“You’re welcome, 007,” Y’da said, and wondered not for the first time recently, if she hadn’t overestimated the date on her wager.

When she had gone, James hung the suit from the hook on the back of the door and started pulling items from the garment bag, a bit awestruck by Q’s thoughtfulness.  He hadn’t seen Q since the man had left earlier that morning for a breakfast meeting at HQ followed by some testing in the relocated Acoustics lab, but James would be sure to share his appreciation for his Quartermaster’s thoughtfulness later.  

Along with the suit he found a light blue shirt with a matching pocket square and a navy silk tie with light blue and burgundy stripes.  Tucked in with a pair cashmere socks inside one of his brown Ferragamo wingtips, was a note written in Q’s tidy script.

 

> _ My James, _
> 
> _ While I have always enjoyed seeing you in this suit, it is  _ _ not _ _ my favourite.  That honour is reserved for your dark grey with burgundy accents windowpane.  I   _ _    had to make a choice this morning when I broke into your flat, and I decided that I was unwilling to sacrifice that gorgeous piece of bespoke artistry to my lust, for be assured that once I have you back in  _ _ my _ _ our flat tonight, I will be tearing this suit from your body. _
> 
> _ And though I have written it here, I promise that when next we meet, I will whisper in your ear that name you say you’ve missed hearing from my lips. _
> 
> _ Always,  _
> 
> _ Your Q _
> 
>  

The corner of James’ lip twitched up in a gentle smile as he reread the note twice more, committing the words to memory.  He then folded the note as it had come and slid it carefully into the inside breast pocket of the suit jacket. 

Ten minutes later, James left the small exam room, his casual clothes on hangers inside the garment bag which he set down on the floor in front of the reception desk.  He draped the jacket of his suit on the top of the desk and turned to the small, decorative mirror on the wall.  He propped his walking stick against his leg as he adjusted his tie in the glass.  James was in the process of reaching for his jacket when alarms started blaring through the bunkers that housed both Medical and Q-Branch.

“Outer wall rupture, Tunnel Eleven!  Outer wall rupture, Tunnel Eleven!” sounded R’s voice across the system.  “The Thames has breached containment, rapid flooding underway; acoustics lab.  Repeat, the Thames has breached containment, rapid flooding underway; acoustics lab.  Emergency medical team and systems maintenance required, personnel trapped.  Emergency medical team and systems maintenance required, personnel trapped.”

Q was in that lab.

_      “I am negatively buoyant.” _

_           “I lack the ability to float.”   _

_                “Sink like a stone.” _

The sirens continued to blare, and R’s warning began to repeat on a recorded loop, but James was already sprinting through the passages toward Tunnel Eleven.  He never felt the sharp pains in his leg as he did so.

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

Q looked down at the dark, turbulent surge of Old Father Thames as the water god rapidly took back the space that man had so foolishly tried to claim from him.  It was mesmerizing, really.  Almost poetic in that his life -- one that had been so dependent upon and directed by technology -- would be ended by the most primal of natural elements.  Neither earth, nor fire, nor air could withstand the crushing demands of water.

A snippet of a poem he once studied in Uni suddenly popped into his head: 

 

_      Old Father Thames advanced his reverend head; _

_      His tresses dropp’d with dews, and o’er the stream _

_      His shining horns diffused a golden gleam: _

_      Grav’d on his arm appear’d the moon that guides _

_      His welling waters and alternate tides: _

_      The figur’d streams in waves of silver roll’d, _

_      And on her banks Augusta rose in gold. _

 

The gush and swell beneath him were anything but ‘waves of silver,’ but Pope had been spot on about ‘welling waters and alternate tides.’

“Quartermaster!”

Q jerked his unfocused gaze from the seething waters that now reached the middle of the shelving unit atop which he and April had taken refuge.  “Yes?!  Sorry.  What?”

“Are you okay, sir?  You seemed to venture off there for a mo’.”  April had to practically shout to be heard over the rush of the water  flooding the room.

“Yes.  Fine.  Just coming to terms with the fact if this turns out badly, Mummy’s eulogy at my funeral is likely to be one protracted ‘I told you so.’”

“I cannot  _ believe _ you never learned to swim.”

“For the last time, I  _ know _ how to bloody swim, but I’m not going to be doing laps in  _ that _ .  I can’t float and can’t really tread water.  There’s a difference.”    

“Explain it to me when we get out of this.”

“Capital!” he huffed and wrapped his arms more tightly around his torso, trying to scoot closer to the wall and further away from the water that rose ever higher.  They had climbed up the shelf before April had got wet much above her knees, but as he had been knocked down by the initial surge, Q was soaked to the skin, hair plastered to his head.  He was freezing and his shaking was becoming so violent that Q feared jostling their perch loose from the bolts that secured it to the ground.  Cold water shock was a very real possibility.

He brought his watch close to his face. It may not be an Omega, but at least it was waterproof.  “Seventeen minutes since the initial breach.  How long since we lost contact?”

“Eleven minutes.” April said.

“I am sorry about your mobile, by the way.”  Q had been coordinating their rescue with R when the shivering had started, and April’s mobile was lost to the depths.  All they could do now was hope and trust.

“I’ll forgive you so long as you build me a replacement even better than the ones with which we equip the Double-Os.”

“Seems fair enough.”  Q said, trying to keep the mood light.  He immediately started making mental blueprints for the future device.  If nothing else, it gave him something else to think about for …  all of 93 seconds.

“How close?” he asked.  Without his glasses, Q couldn’t get a decent estimate of the water level.

“About eight centimetres above the fourth shelf. Give or take two centimetres seeing as how the water’s not exactly still.”

“And the hole?”

April rattled off the rough estimates.  She was unsuccessful in keeping the fear from her voice.  

She had good cause.

Q mentally calculated the maths, accounting for the height between each shelf -- they were sat on the top, or seventh shelf -- the volume of the room, the increased size of the hole, which now ran from ground to ceiling at varying widths, and the estimated rate at which the water was filling the lab.  

If they didn’t get out of here in … bugger! six minutes, Q wouldn’t have to worry about water shock.

They would have already drowned.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's likely one more chapter and an epilogue to come. We're getting closer to the art -- and the smut -- really! I do hope that you're all still enjoying this story. If so, please press that little comment button below and leave a few words to let me know what you thought. It would make my week! Truly!
> 
> TTFN!


	6. The Blessings that Remain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the flood ...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are finally here! 
> 
> Please note the rating increase to Explicit. There are a few tag additions, too.
> 
> There will be a short epilogue to come as there is a wager to be settled, but this is the chapter that I hope you've all been waiting for. I do, again, apologize for how long it took me to complete this story. As a teacher, my time is always sucked up by grading, but I'm also in the process of applying for jobs overseas which would be a MAJOR change for me and my husband. Needless to say, a lot of time has been sucked up that has had nothing to do with writing. I thank you for your patience and in sticking with this tale.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!
> 
>    
> All chapters have been beta-read for your protection and for the safety and security of Bond and Q as they engage in sexy times. Any remaining errors are purely mine.

Essential by Beili

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

“The Blessings that Remain”

 

* * *

 

 

James Bond had lived a life filled with action.  Visited practically every corner of the world where he interacted with the violent and the benign, the practical and the mystical.  Yet for all that he had seen and done, James never thought that he would be so … bloody, fucking  _ thankful _ to see something so boringly domestic as the Quartermaster of MI6 standing in front of his kitchen worktop, lost in thought while making a cuppa.   

The kettle hummed and bubbled its way to completion, and though he fiddled with the tea sachet he held, it was clear to James that his Q saw neither it nor anything else in his immediate vicinity, staring off into the middle distance as he was. 

“Q?”  The boffin’s answering ‘hmmmm’ was as vacant as his gaze.

James pushed off the door jamb to the kitchen with his hip and grunted in pain as his body got moving again.  His leg was killing him.  Even with the new brace wrapped around his knee, James’ limp was far more pronounced than it had been earlier in the day, but it was of minor consequence at the moment.  James had dealt with worse pain, but secretly admitted that his walking stick would have been most welcome if he had it in hand.  He would need to get a new one as said stick lay somewhere -- broken and splintered, in the now flooded and sealed off Tunnel 11 -- lost to the rush of waters.  James had used it to temporarily wedge open the heavy doors as Rand (001), Tommy (008), Tanner, and he pulled a waterlogged boffin and her drowned Quartermaster from the Acoustics Lab.  

James slid his arms around Q from behind and gently slipped his hands under the open halves of his blue pinstripe suit jacket that Q wore as his own, seeking comfort in the sensation of the bare,  _ finally warm _ , flesh beneath his hands.  

Q had been cold, so very cold and still in James’ arms as he pushed through the rising, turbulent waters in the tunnel and between the closing bulkhead doors at the second junction where Y’da and her staff were already working on April Witkowski. James’ leg had given out just inside the bulkhead, and he fell to his knees.  Not waiting for the medical staff to intervene, he immediately started CPR on the man he loved.    

Though time itself became trapped in amber for those minutes that James had acted as both heart and lungs for Q, he had felt as though his very soul had been pushed out and sucked back in with each compression and breath.  James had barely heard Y’da issuing orders to her staff as she cut through Q’s jumper and button down, and he was only tangentially aware of the high-pitched whine of the portable defibrillator powering to its full charge.  He had instead abandoned the chaos around him for the focussed yet barely controlled panic of an inner monologue that beat in counterpoint to the 30-count compressions as James forced Death to hover over Q’s shoulder instead of swooping in to claim his prize. 

 

_ No.  No.  No!  Not again.   _

_ Not this time.   _

_ Not him. _

_ Breathe.  Breathe, Q! _

_ Not like her.   _

_ Not him!  Not now! _

_ Breathe.  Breathe! _

_ I love him!   _

 

“James, pull back.”

 

_ I love you!   _

     “I.”

          “Love.”

               “You!”

 

“Double-O Seven, CLEAR!  Bugger!   _ Bill, get him out of there _ !”

Tanner had wrenched James back from Q’s side and Y’da triggered the paddles she had pressed to Q’s chest, delivering 3,000 volts of electricity into Q’s slack body which twitched slightly -- the movies had it wrong, James had learned later -- then Y’da pressed her fingers to the Quartermaster’s carotid and her stethoscope to his chest.

Q’s head had lolled to the side, hazel eyes open and dim, staring sightlessly into James’.

“Nothing.  Rand, take over for Bond.  Resume,” Y’da snapped and programmed the device to charge again.

James’ world very nearly ended with Y’da’s sharp pronouncement.

Tanner clasped James tightly to his chest, back to front, murmuring reassurances into the agent’s ear as they sat sprawled together on the rough, damp ground of the tunnel.  James felt the tears that streamed down his face, but he refused to wipe them away, rather focussing his attention on the way 001 fought to force life back into Q’s body.

“Please, Q.  No’ like this,” James whispered.

Rand had pulled back on Y’da’s order and another 3,000 volts of electricity surged through Q’s still form.

The Quartermaster’s first, desperate breath forced the Thames from his lungs, and Y’da quickly slid a oxygen cannulae under his nose, looped the ends over his ears, and rolled him on his side facing James as Q coughed violently, expelling the water from his body. 

Q had reached out, instinctively knowing that James was nearby though he could not see him, temporarily blinded by trauma, panic, and the loss of his spectacles to the muddy waters.  James surged from Tanner’s grasp and kissed the frigid flesh of Q’s outstretched hand before pressing it to his chest, letting the frantic tattoo of his heart fill Q’s palm.

“'m here, luv.” James’ voice was Scots thick with emotion.  “An’ so ‘re ye.”

Y’da and her team worked briskly and efficiently, hooking Q up to a portable heart monitor and a finger pulse oximeter before loading him onto a medical trolley and moving him and a heavily limping 007 back to Medical.

James’ heart caught on the memory of the moment he saw life spark back into his love’s eyes, and he pressed his forehead into the curve of Q’s shoulder, and then tightened his arms around Q, trying to keep yet another surge of jumbled emotions from getting the better of him.  

Q sucked in a pained breath, and James immediately loosened his grip but did not let go.  In fact, James wasn’t certain that in that moment he was physically capable of letting Q go.

“Ribs?” James asked into Q’s shoulder.

“You’re sure they said ‘only bruised.’”  Q twisted uncomfortably.

“Saw the films myself.  Not so much as a crack.”  Q had been lucky.  So had James.

“Bugger these hurt.”  Q rubbed gently at his sternum and ribs then linked his fingers with James’ where one hand rested just below Q’s heart.  He leaned back into James’ embrace and turned his head to nuzzle the agent’s temple.  “It’s beyond me how you managed to hare off into the field with cracked and  _ broken _ ribs and still managed to blow up oil pipelines and pull satellites from the heavens while fighting to the death against rogue MI6 agents and megalomaniacal foster brothers with a world domination fetish.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “Does Tom Ford do bespoke capes?”

“I’m hardly a superhero, Q.”  James couldn’t help the chuckle in his voice.  It seemed that even clinical death did little to keep his Quartermaster’s rapier wit down for long.

“No.  You’re either a genius or an idiot.  I’m still undecided as to whi --”  What had been likely to become a lengthy monologue on James’ propensity to be ‘reckless in field’ was cut short by a sudden coughing fit.  Though he had been cleared through Medical -- more or less -- Q’s lungs were still not wholly convinced that they were ‘dry’ and continued to feel the need to cough up the non-existent waters of the Thames.

James turned Q in his arms and held him carefully, supporting his thin frame as the spasms wracked his body, leaving the Quartermaster breathless from the effort and the pain.  

“You should probably lie down.  Go.”  He gave Q a gentle nudge.  “I’ll fix your tea.”

“Shower first,” Q mumbled into James’ collarbone.  “I stink of the river.”  Though he'd never cop to it, James secretly admitted that Q was quite correct.  

“Need help?”  He nodded at Q’s right hand and the deep gash Y’da had stitched up and wrapped with gauze.   

Q stepped out of the circle of Bond’s arms and shook his head, his dark curls matted and clumped together with polluted residue.  He still felt a little wobbly and muzzy-headed from the pain medication and the experience as a whole, but it was nothing he couldn’t handle.  “I’ll keep it dry with a nitrile glove, call out if I need anything, just --” Q hated his sudden hesitation, but he suddenly felt even more wrong-footed than he had when Bond first returned from his retirement.

James cupped Q’s cheek in the palm of his hand.  “Anything.”

“I -- I know this isn’t exactly how we planned our night to go, but --”

The kiss James pressed to Q’s lips was brief yet passionate and dispelled the bulk of Q’s irrational anxiety.  When Bond pulled back, Q was surprised by the sheen of tears in his lover’s eyes.  “Like I give a fuck about that right now.  Q, if all we ever do for the next 40 or 50 years is snog and cuddle, I’ll count myself a lucky man.”

Q snorted in spite of the pain in his chest.  “Liar.  You’d never be content with just a snog and a cuddle.”

James cupped Q’s face in his hands and skimmed the pads of his thumbs over the wrinkles at corners of Q’s bright, beautiful,  _ life-filled _ hazel eyes, down the angles and planes of his face, and across the curves of Q’s lips before pressing their foreheads together.  “Yer a gift  _ beyond _ price,” James whispered, his baritone suddenly harsh with his normally contained Scots brogue.  “I almost lost ye today, and that came near on to destroyin’ me.”  He swallowed roughly before continuing.  “This mornin’, I feared never again t’ be hearin’ yer voice wi’ that flinty tone ye get when I’ve ruined yer tech or seein’ th’ bliss on yer face wi’ yer first mornin’ sip o’ Earl Gray.  Believe me, luv, holdin’ ye like this, tis ‘nough.” 

The next brush of lips against his was so tender that it nearly broke Q’s heart.  

James stepped back, freeing Q from their embrace.  “Off you pop, luv.  I know ye hate being dirty.  I’ll be ready with tea, yer spare specks, and a cuddle when all’s done.”  

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

Moving gingerly to avoid paining his ribs, Q slid out of Bond’s suit jacket and carefully hung it on the hook on the back of the door to the en suite.  There was nothing left of the rest of the suit; 007 had thoroughly destroyed it in the rescue, but Q couldn’t bring himself to toss the jacket in the bin.  Q had spied the jacket on top of Medical’s reception desk when he was wheeled past, and though the nurses had offered them each a workout kit to change into, Q had chosen the jacket because it was Bond’s.  It smelled like him.  It felt like him.  Even now, Q didn’t really want to take it off.

Q brushed his teeth -- grateful that he hadn’t cut his dominant hand -- then fiddled with the controls of the shower and slumped onto the closed seat of the toilet, waiting for the water to heat.  He pulled on a nitrile glove he had grabbed from beneath the sink, then peeled the plasters from the crook of his right elbow where the IV needle had been, and tossed them in the bin.  Y’da had pumped him full of saline -- drowning was surprising dehydrating -- and a broad-spectrum antibiotic to kill whatever Q might have picked up from inhaling half the Thames.  His lungs, ribs, and hand still hurt, and he’d be watched closely for signs of pneumonia, but Q had been given as clean a bill of health as Y’da’s staff could provide.

The tests had been endless, but Bond had been at his side for every last one of them, always in physical contact -- be it a hand, a foot, a shoulder, even Q’s left earlobe at one point -- as though Bond feared Q would disappear if he so much as glanced away.

They had said little in those hours, thankful to simply be in each other’s company.  Q dozed while 007 had a quick shower then was evaluated and fitted into a new brace that supported his knee.  He woke in the circle of Bond’s arms, tucked safely into the agent’s side as though he was treasure guarded by a dragon.

Steam from the shower spilled over the top edge of the glass enclosure, and Q rose, exhausted.  Death by drowning assuredly took a lot out of a man.

Bond’s words were very much on Q’s mind when he finally stepped into the steaming shower, though.

_ Forty or 50 years to snog and cuddle. _

With that one comment, Bond had managed to ease a fear that Q hadn’t even really known he’d had until the metaphorical weight had been lifted.  

Fifty years.  

A lifetime.

As he scrubbed himself clean -- thrice -- Q supposed there had still been a minute part of him that feared James’ interest was only fleeting.  That a scrawny, tea-infused, waspish, technophile with a penchant for loud jumpers and dodgy curries could never hold for long the attention or affections of one of the world’s most amazing men.

The thing was, even before SPECTRE and bloody Madeleine Swann, when Q pined for his agent from afar and was as content as he felt he had any right to be with their peculiar brand of friendship, James had always accepted Q’s odd quirks and idiosyncrasies.  And in the year since his return, even when Q was at his most splenetic and spiteful, James had gone out of his way to make Q feel as though  _ he _ was the most amazing man in the world.  At least as far as one James Bond, secret agent, was concerned.   

Q believed him.

He had seen it in Bond’s eyes in the tunnel, in Medical, and just now as they stood in one another’s arms in their kitchen.  Q knew that there was no more time to waste or to wait.  Their chance had nearly slipped them by, and that was simply unacceptable.

Q rinsed the last of the shampoo from his hair and applied some conditioner -- hissing in pain when he accidentally knocked his injured hand against the tiled wall of the shower stall in his haste -- before reaching for a small bottle in the shower caddy that had received a significant amount of attention in recent weeks.  Yes, Bond had moved into Q’s bed, and they had  _ both _ agreed to move slowly, but there was only so much platonic a man could take.  Holding the opaque bottle to the light, Q’s myopic eyes could just make out that the level of liquid was sufficient to his cause.

Exhausted though he was, Q was done waiting.

His lifetime with James Bond started  _ now _ .  

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

James was sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed in nothing but his pants, loosening the velcro straps of the  _ new _ brace he wore, when Q finally came out of the en suite. He carried James’ suit jacket in his hand.

“Everything okay?” James asked.  He set the brace across his lap and began rubbing absently at the abused joint.  “I was about ready to send in an extraction team.”

“Thank you, but I think I’ve had my quota on rescue operations for the year,” Q replied with a pained grimace, draping the jacket on the end of the bed.  The CPR bruises on his chest had blossomed in the shower, and he knew he looked a fright, but the heat along with some liberally applied arnica gel had gone a long way to easing his many pains.  

“Eve called,” James said, holding out a thin case to Q as he drew near.  “Medical sent April home, too.  Minor concussion and hypothermia.  R will keep an eye on her tonight, but she’ll be fine.”

“Thank God for that.”  Medical had been typically tight-lipped about April’s condition, and Q had been discharged home without any details other than that she was alive.  With a grateful sigh, he slipped on the spectacles from the case Bond had given him.  Between the flat and Six, Q kept four or five spare sets of glasses on hand, but in the chaos surrounding his rescue, recovery, and medical evaluation no one (not even he) had thought to scrounge up a pair and he'd spent the intervening hours in a myopic haze that he was only too happy to put behind him.

Holding out his hand next for Bond’s knee brace, Q tossed the black contraption onto the overstuffed reading chair in the corner nearest the bed, turned down the dimmer switch on the bedside lamp, and subtlely loosened the drawstring of the sleep trousers he had put on when he got out of the shower.  They were Bond’s -- already a bit large on Q’s much slimmer frame -- and the agent’s appreciative grunt when the trousers slipped ever so low on Q’s hips, exposing the top curve of his plush buttocks, caused Q to smile.  It was the pure need he saw in 007’s vibrant eyes when he turned back to him, however, that caused a spike of complementary arousal to surge straight to Q’s own cock.

James’ gaze alighted on the tenting fabric in front of him, and he swallowed tightly when Q slid carefully to his knees between James’ legs to rest his head against the curve of his muscular thigh.  Q wrapped his arms around James’ hips and nuzzled the thin silk boxers before pressing a chaste kiss to the tip of the not-quite-quiescent cock beneath.

“Q!”  James’ groan was pained and breathy, and Q nearly exploded with want and love when Bond started to card his fingers through Q’s still damp curls.  “Not really the … snog and cudd -- Jesus, fuck! Q!”

Another sucking, hot, lingering kiss through black silk, and James fell back on his elbows.

Q turned his head to look into blue eyes grown dark with restrained need and tugged at the waistband of the boxers.  Q scooted back, as James lifted his hips almost without realising he was doing so, and it was but a moment before they managed to cast the pants aside.

“Turns out _ I’m _ the one who won’t be content with a snog and cuddle,” Q said with a wink before swallowing Bond’s cock whole.

James’ shout of pleasure echoed off the walls of the small bedroom, and it took every ounce of control he had not to come the moment the tip of his cock touched the back of Q’s throat.  Leave it to Q to have no gag reflex.  Everything they had talked about, and the little fucker hadn’t mentioned  _ that _ .   The warm, wet sensation was overwhelming, and James gripped the back of Q’s head, tangling his fingers tightly into the dark locks.  Q’s answering hum only served to reinforce the pleasure coursing through him.  

They hadn’t done this before, and bugger if James didn’t think himself fifteen different types of fool for having not.  

They’d talked about it of course.  They’d talked about  _ everything _ , likes and dislikes, had left nothing out.  James, for example, liked it a bit rough in bed, even to the point of having control taken from him on occasion.  Q knew that James’ submission kink was born out of his always needing to be the dominant on honey pots where one lapse could cost him the mission or his life.  James had also confided that he had only ever trusted one other person enough to let go and explore his submissive side: Alec Trevelyan, who shared a relationship with Bond closer than that of brothers but who wouldn’t know a moment’s submission if it hit him in the face with a pipe.  James didn’t always need or want to submit, but there were certainly times he needed it, usually when he felt as though he had lost control of a situation.  Rather than feeling a need to reassert dominance through topping, James reestablished control through first giving it away completely.  

_ I know.  It doesn’t make any sense, does it? _  A frustrated James had said to Q as they lay curled up against each other, half-naked in bed, that night when they’d discussed so many things but acted on none of them.

_ The needs of our bodies and our psyches are curious things, 007.  I don’t think it’s supposed to make sense, but so long as we ultimately get what we need to be healthy and happy, and nobody gets hurt in the process, I don’t much worry about it, _ James’ love had replied with a kiss to his collarbone.

Q was now the only other in James’ life whom he trusted without reservation, and the fact that Q prefered to ‘top from the bottom’ meant that they were, quite possibly, the perfect match.

The sudden absence of Q’s mouth wrapped around him pulled James from his thoughts with a groan of frustration.  

“I recognize that look on your face, 007; you’re  _ thinking _ .  If you have enough wits about you to do that, then I’m clearly not making the impression I intend to have.  I guess I’ll just have to pull out all the stops, then, won’t I?”

Q dropped his head back to his task, but with the added twist of the tips of two slick fingers pressing against and then into James’ hole.

_ When did Q get out the slic -- Oh, fuck! _

Three seconds later, James definitely wasn’t thinking anymore.  All he could do was  _ feel _ .  

Q’s lips had worked their way from the base of his cock, and he was now alternating between gentle and more pointed nips at his frenulum before soothing the tender flesh with the flat of his tongue and sliding the tip beneath the elastic flesh of Bond’s foreskin. When James collapsed fully against the mattress, Q carefully pulled his fingers out of James before hooking the man’s injured knee over his own slim shoulder to ease the pressure on the joint.  He then slid his hands beneath James’ waist to pull him closer and took him down to the root once more as he pressed his fingers back inside, the pads of his fingers dancing around the nub of James’ prostate.  

James’s hips bucked up against the sensation.  When, rather than restrain his movement, Q’s response was to moan against the hard mass against his tongue and slide his free, bandaged hand up James’ chest to tug and twist roughly at his nipples, James rightly took that as consent and began fucking purposefully into Q’s mouth.

James had never been particularly vocal in bed as, on the whole, it was simply too dangerous given his line of work; he had long since trained himself to emit just those sounds necessary to stimulate the partner sharing his bed.  Q, however, had completely managed to destroy all James’ planning and preconditioning in the shortest time imaginable.  It was their first time together, yet Q’s preternatural caresses of James’ body, inside and out, spoke of long-term intimacy, and James was wholly unable to contain his vocalisations or maintain any control over the moans of pleasure that Q seemed to be sucking out of him with each pull and nip and stroke.  

“Your.  Fucking.  Mouth!”  James clawed at a pillow just beside his head with one hand and bit into the side of his other as Q pulled him apart.  He needed more, but in that moment, James was as desperate to cling to his control as he was to lose it.  He was so fucking close, but he needed ...  to see Q.

Releasing his grip on the pillow, James hooked his fingers under the edge of Q’s frames and flipped the spectacles from his face.  Q’s eyes popped open with surprise, but he didn’t stop his ministrations.  If anything Q doubled his efforts, but James had what he wanted:  an unfettered view of those eyes he loved so much.  

Blue locked on hazel, James moaned Q’s name again and again against his hand as he rutted into his lover’s mouth, and it was a matter of moments before James felt his bollocks draw up, and the first surges of his orgasm began.

Q instantly pulled off, his fingers withdrew, and James’ groan of displeasure was as much for the abrupt absence of Q’s mouth and touch as for the sudden iron grip around the base of his cock.  

Q was forbidding James his release.

James tried to come, but Q’s grip tightened still further.  His hips continued to thrust needfully, seeking friction,  _ something _ he could continue to rut against and come.  Q's hand moved with the motion of his hips, not restraining him one bit and giving him not a millimetre to work with as James' head thumped back against the bed in frustration,  there was nothing save the air.  

“You’ve got … to be … fucking  _ kidding _ me!”

Q smiled and dipped the tip of his tongue into the slit of the glans, sipping tenderly of the precome that had pooled there like an offering.   

“Q!”  Again the grip tightened.  “Please!”  Q was simply not going to let him come.

James felt Q rest his head against the inside his thigh, but though he no longer teased neither did he release his grasp.  James sucked in deep gulps of air as he struggled to regain his control. 

A minute or a lifetime later, James felt the urgency ease, his desperate panting slowed, and with it Q’s grip eased and then released its hold.  Q eased Bond’s leg off from his shoulder and let it rest back against the side of mattress.  James’ cock spasmed and twitched against his belly -- he was still harder than he had been in ages and precome continued to drip over his skin -- but he was no longer at risk of spending himself.

“God that was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,” Q said, rising to his feet, his tenor noticeably deepened by lust and need.  Watching Bond wrestle for control had been one of the most intensely erotic moments Q had ever witnessed, and he’d nearly come himself at the sight of it.  “How is it that you are so fucking gorgeous?”

James opened his eyes and looked up at Q, taking in the image before him.  “I should ask the same thing,” James panted.  

His Quartermaster stood before him at the edge of the bed like a god.  He had stripped himself of the loose sleep trousers, and the dim light of the lamp illuminated his now naked body from behind.  His dark curls were a tousled mess from James’ fingers, and though he saw the bruising on Q’s chest, James focussed instead on the sight of Q’s red, fuck-swollen lips, his broad shoulders and lightly muscled torso that tapered down to slim hips and the hint of the swell of that deliciously plush arse.  

It was Q’s cock, however, that was the true centerpiece.  James had felt it pressed up against him at night for weeks now -- both quiescent and tumescent -- knew it to be long and slim, but the sight of it now, turgid and flushed and dripping with need, was nearly overwhelming.  James suddenly surged up and and grasped Q by the hips, pulling him down on top of him.  They gasped in unison when they brushed against one another, but Q captured Bond’s gasp with a kiss. 

James again tangled his fingers into Q’s hair, pressing his love down into the kiss even as he pressed up into it.  Lips caught, teeth clashed as they fought to control the moment.  Q whimpered when James’ tongue curled against his, demanding capitulation, and for an instant, Q yielded. A sense of triumphant wickedness rushed through James but evaporated at the sound of another whimper that had absolutely nothing to do with pleasure. 

In his eagerness, James had clasped Q too tightly to him and pressed against his already bruised rib cage.  James watched helplessly as his love struggled with the sudden pain, knowing all too well the intensity of it.  This is what James had been worried about.  This is why he had suggested a snog and a cuddle.

James shifted and tried to slide out from underneath Q, but Q clamped down on James with his thighs and glared at him from beneath his fringe.

“Just where do you think you’re going?” he demanded, panting through the pain.

“Q, please.  I don’t want to hurt you anymore than --”

“I’m okay. We both got a bit caught up is all.  Just give me a minute.”  

James looked on, helplessly, but gave Q his minute.  And another.  Just as he was about to insist that they save this -- as mind-blowingly hot as it was -- for another day, Q took a cautious but deep breath, and James could see that he did so without pain.  

“I’m not being foolish, I promise.  You trust me enough to surrender yourself to me, so trust me enough to know that I won’t do anything to hurt myself in the process.”  

James ran his hand up the side of Q’s chest and let it linger on his sternum; Q could still see the doubt in his expression and loved him all the more for it.  “Please, love.  Bruises aren’t breaks.  I need this.  I need  _ you _ .  Don’t make me wait any longer.”

James wished he could say that there were things he could deny Q, but at this moment, he wasn’t entirely sure that was the case.  He leaned up and kissed Q tenderly on the side of the mouth before capturing his lips once more with his own.

His erection had flagged somewhat knowing that Q was in pain, but as they kissed -- languidly, purposefully -- its strength returned but without the raw urgency of before.  They snogged and they cuddled, but they did so with hands and lips and tongues that surveyed and mapped each other’s bodies.  A cursory expedition, but one that etched out paths and trails to be explored in finer detail in their journey to come. 

Countless minutes and moans of pleasure later, Q lifted himself off his lover and settled momentarily on his knees at the farthest bottom corner of the bed.  “Budge over,” he said, indicating the mound of pillows against the headboard that they’d been lying parallel to all this time. 

As James wriggled around carefully to avoid accidentally kicking Q, he reached over his head to grasp the headboard and once in position, stretched out his body to its full length, groaning in pleasure at the sensation.  That it also served to highlight every gorgeously defined muscle in his arms, torso, and legs was not lost on Q.

“My preening peacock,” he chuckled, tossing the tube of slick onto Bond’s abdomen.  

“Well, I do want you to know  _ exactly _ what you’re getting.  Buyer’s remorse is a terrible thing.”

Q said nothing but flashed Bond a brilliant smile.  He then reached behind him and picked up the suit jacket he had placed on the mattress earlier, sighing with pleasure as he was enveloped once again by its silk-lined folds.  He crawled back up 007’s body and pressed a lingering kiss first to one nipple, then the other, peppering still further kisses up the line of Bond’s neck until he captured the other man’s lips in a kiss that was equal parts filthy and chaste.  

“I hate to point it out, but one usually takes clothes  _ off _ before this next part,” James murmured against Q’s mouth, tugging at the lapel of the jacket.

“I can’t feel you surround me if you’re inside me,” Q responded with a nudge to Bond’s temple. “This is the next best thing.”

“Brilliant man.”

“No.  What’s brilliant is that I was very,  _ very _ thorough in the shower.”  

Any reply that Bond may have wanted to make was lost to the sensation of Q taking his cock in hand, slicking it up with palm-warmed lube, and positioning the glans at his prepared hole.  Q pressed back just far enough for it to pop inside him.  

James’ hips bucked in response and in one slow, continuous motion, Q seated himself fully on his cock.  For the next several moments only the sound of their ragged breathing could be heard in the room, then Q raised his eyes to Bond’s.

“For the record, James, I know exactly what I’m getting,” Q said breathlessly.  

“And what is that?”  James’ voice caught on the emotion of hearing his name,  _ finally _ , on Q’s lips.  

Q clasped each of James’ hands in his, entwining their fingers as he began to move his hips.

“The love of my life.”

 

_**~~00Q~~** _

 

James wasn’t entirely sure how long he slept, but he woke to the sensation of a warm, damp cloth cleansing his belly and thighs.  He smiled and, eyes still closed, wrapped his arms around Q’s waist.  

“You’re lovely.  Thank you,” he said, humming his appreciation into the other man’s hip.  

“I like to think I have my moments.”  Q was sat on the edge of the bed and kissed the top of James’ head, running his fingers lovingly through the short blond strands.

“How do you feel?”  James asked.

“Incandescent.”

James opened his eyes to the sight of the first early morning rays shining onto the face of a gently smiling Quartermaster.  Incandescent, indeed. He took Q’s hand and pressed a kiss to the pads of his fingers.  “Feeling much the same myself, but not  _ quite _ what I meant.”

“I hurt,” Q admitted.  “In both good and bad ways.”  His arse was delightfully sore as it had been stretched more than once by James’ deliciously thick length; his ribs on the other hand … He had submitted to the inevitable and taken some of the painkillers that Y’da had prescribed him.  He didn’t much care for the effect they had on his mind, but the paracetamol simply wasn’t cutting it.

“What do you need?”  James dropped a kiss to the top of his tousled head when Q lay down next to him and tucked in close.   

“This.”  Q sighed contentedly and James ran his hand soothingly up and down Q’s back.  

“I love you, James Andrew Bond,” Q said after several long minutes in his arms.   

“Since the Tube, you said,” James said, reflecting on the incident in an entirely new way given where he was, with whom, and how.  The old memories lingered, however, and James chuckled in spite of himself.  “You were such a pretentious prick.”

Q slapped James’ chest lightly and sat up, highly offended.  “Were?!  What do you mean,  _ were _ !  I still  _ am _ a pretentious prick, I’ll have you know.  It’s part of my carefully cultivated persona.” 

“My sincere apologies, Quartermaster. No one will ever hear differently from my lips.”  God but he enjoyed this banter.  James crossed his arms behind his head and took a good, long look at the man before him.  “I love you, Q.” 

“Remy.”

“What?”

“That’s my given name. ‘Remy.’  Well, Rembrandt, actually, but if you ever call me that I promise you that they won’t find your body.  Mum had fondness for naming her children the most ridiculous things.  Of the three of us, mine was at least the easiest to normalize, even if it does sound appallingly French.”

“Rembrandt …” James mulled it over for a moment.  “It suits, though,” he said, trailing his fingers up and down the length of Q’s forearm.  “He was one of the greatest visual artists of all time.  You’re certainly a master of  _ your _ craft.” 

Q leaned down pressed his lips to James’ in a lingering kiss.  “Thank you for the compliment, but the threat stands.  Remy at home if you must, but truthfully, I prefer Q.”

“As you wish, love.”

James tried to pull him closer again, but Q resisted, instead opening James’ hand and pressing a small pouch into his palm. The leather of which was well-worn and supple with age and use.   

“What’s this then?” James asked.  Budging up on the pillows, he unlaced the ties that cinched it shut and upended the container.  A thick band fell into his palm. He looked up with startled eyes. “Q?”

Q struggled to meet James’ intent gaze, feeling suddenly shy and exposed.  He longed for the suit jacket he had been stripped of in the middle of their third go when James insisted on feeling nothing but Q’s skin against his own as his Quartermaster pressed into him for the first time.  

“It's been in the family for a very long time. Our uncle gave it to my older brother who gave it to me about a year ago after he married his Army doctor,” Q said, finally acknowledging his familial ties beyond the parental.  “Didn’t feel it really fit John’s personality, and Lord knows our eldest brother will never need it, the stuffy git.”

James inspected the ring as Q spoke.  James knew jewellry, and this ring was  _ old _ .  Older still than some of the Bond and Delacroix pieces left to him by his parents that James kept in a secured bank box in Switzerland.  The band was made of what looked to be patinaed copper with beveled, brightly polished edges and inlaid with some sort of organic material that James could not readily identify. 

“Wood?” he asked, running a fingernail across the inlay.

Q shook his head and continued to put all his focus on the ring in James’ hand.  “Stag antler.  I saw the photos the after-action crew took of Skyfall,” he admitted.  “The statue is magnificent, and I thought this ring might be appropriate.  It can’t be sized, unfortunately, but I think it might fit.  If you want it, that is.”  He swallowed tightly and raised his eyes to James’.  “If you want …  _ me _ .”

“What is it that you’re asking me, Q?” James cupped his love’s cheek in the palm of his hand.

“Marry me, James.”  Q’s shyness disappeared, but he started to ramble instead, clearly nervous.  “Maybe you feel it’s too soon, but it’s really not.  At least not when you consider the fact that we’ve known each other for years, and you said that while you only consciously realised that you loved me when you were in Aspen, you’d actually  _ been _ in love with me for much longer, and you know when it happened for me.  We’ve never really talked about it, and maybe marriage isn’t your thing, and I get that … maybe.  No, I do. I would.  I just know that I don’t want to be without you any longer.  In fact, the thought of not being knit to you in every way possible is sometimes unbear --”

Q was cut off by a kiss so intense and lingering that when it finally concluded minutes later, he was largely convinced that some part of his soul had transcended to a higher plane of existence.  

“You really should  _ not _ be that good at that,” Q panted against James’ mouth when he was cognizant of his surroundings again.

“Well, with luck, you’ll have a good 40 or 50 years as my husband to get used to it.”  James replied as he nibbled on Q’s earlobe.

Q’s smile was … yes, Bond thought, incandescent.  

“The horror that I should ever get used to --”  James cut Q off with another kiss that led to another that led to them eventually tangled in each other’s arms, utterly shagged out and grinning like loons.

  


 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I certainly hope that you enjoyed this final major chapter. Please let me know what you thought about it. As my beloved beta can attest, I've had a bit of a crap week -- though it did spur me to channel my frustrations into creative directions, and I finished this as a result. Nonetheless, I could really use some positive feedback if you feel it is warranted.
> 
> My thanks again to Beili for a beautiful piece of art to work from!


	7. What Weight the Water Can Carry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue
> 
> The winner of the Wedding Wager is revealed, and James and Q enjoy their sex holiday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! The final chapter. It was supposed to be a short epilogue, but I guess that for me, 6700 words is short. LOL!
> 
> Thank you all for following this story and for offering up your comments and kudos. This story would not have come into being without Beili's fabulous artwork or for springbok7's amazing work as my beta. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!!
> 
> I hope that you enjoy this final chapter. Remember, please, that comments are love!

### What Weight the Water Can Carry

* * *

 

 

Alec Trevelyan swanned into the antechamber of M’s office with a wide grin, his green eyes dancing with anticipation, and sat down with one hip balanced on the edge of Moneypenny’s desk.  

Eve couldn’t help but grin in return.  “Good morning, 006.  What has you in such a sparkling mood?”

“It’s a beautiful day, Moneypenny?  Why would I be anything but?”

Eve glanced out the window behind her though she knew what she would see.  Sure enough, not much had changed since she arrived at MI6 three hours earlier.  “Alec, it’s pissing outside.”  As if to emphasise her point, several rumbles of thunder could be heard through the bulletproof glass.  “What about _that_ makes for a beautiful day?”

“What?  Oh, the weather?  No.  No, you’re completely right, my darling Eve.  Absolutely ghastly out there.  If that keeps up much longer I may need to requisition an ark from Q-Branch instead of another R8.”  Alec had wrecked his last Audi in Turin 10 days previous while chasing down an arms dealer who had kidnapped a local politician’s teenaged daughter.  The girl had been rescued, the dealer killed, but nothing could be done to save the sports car.  The Quartermaster had not been amused.

It was then that Moneypenny noticed that Trevelyan was wearing the same suit he had worn to James and Q’s wedding three days ago.  “Oh dear God,” Eve said with dawning horror when she remembered the two young women she had seen Alec spend the bulk of his time with at the large reception.  “Alec, please, tell me you didn’t spend the weekend with Q’s cousins?  He’ll kill you when he and James get back.  How --”

“I didn’t spend the weekend with the twins, Eve!”  Alec’s good humour faded for a moment and the crease between his golden eyebrows deepened with consternation.  “They’re all of 22.  What do you take me for?  I’ve not shagged a 20-something off mission in over a decade, thank you very much.”

Eve said a silent prayer to the gods for this small mercy.

“Now, their _father_ on the other hand,” Alec growled a bit in appreciation of the memories of his very ... active weekend, and Moneypenny’s prayer died in its infancy. The look on her face spoke volumes, however.  “What?!  Oh, please.   _You_ were the one who pointed Greyson out to me in the first place.  He’s smart, gorgeous, has a security clearance high enough to know what goes on at Six, and it turns out he’s been very lonely since the girls’ mother died eighteen months ago.”

“How lonely, exactly?” Eve asked suspiciously.  She had seen Greyson Holmes at many meetings over the years, but had never had much of an opportunity to speak directly with him as she had done at the wedding reception.

The sparkle returned to Alec’s eyes and Moneypenny was certain his grin would split his face.  “I’ll not kiss and tell, but I will say that James was right.”

“About what?”

“Holmes men are bloody _brilliant_ in bed!”  Alec clapped his hands together and leaned in closer to Eve who sat primly behind her desk.  “That conversation, however, is _not_ why I’m here.”

“Then why, pray tell, are you cluttering up my desk with your arse, 006?”  She loved Alec.  Truly she did.  He held a place in her affections similar to that other wayward Double-O, James Bond, but unlike James, Alec’s boyish nature could be a bit trying at times, and right now, Eve wasn’t wholly certain that Q’s anger would be diminished by the fact that it had been his uncle and not his cousins that Trevelyan had spent a weekend with.  

It turned out that Q was intensely protective of his family -- which is why no one had known about them until a month ago after Q asked James to marry him -- particularly his older brother whom Eve initially thought was an arrogant prick until she’d witnessed the lanky genius interact with his husband and their young daughter, Rosie. It was then that Sherlock’s overbearing superiority faded into a tenderness so profound that it nearly left Eve in tears.  The man had been surprisingly charming after that, so long as John was nearby, but his charm paled in comparison to that of his father’s youngest brother.  She had only spoken with Greyson Holmes for a short while, but Eve had liked him immediately and, in retrospect, agreed with Alec that _that_ Holmes did, indeed, wear his grief over his wife’s tragic death like a heavy mantle. Eve feared that the Quartermaster’s reaction was likely to be apoplectic unless Alec could convince him that it hadn’t simply been a one-off.

“I’m here to collect my winnings.”  Alec rubbed his hands together in anticipation.  

“What do you mean?  What winnings?”

Alec looked at her as though she had grown a second head or had suddenly become the thickest person he had ever met.

“You didn’t win the wedding wager, Alec.”

“Of course I did.  April 6th.  They married on April 7th.  The closest to the date without exceeding it.  Those were the terms of the wager, yes?”

“Yes.  You still didn’t win.”

“Someone picked the _exact_ date?!”  Alec rose from the desk top, voice incredulous.  “Who?!” he demanded.

Eve rose slowly from her chair and after a moment searching for the correct folder in the secured cabinet behind her desk -- only the most important documents were still kept in ‘hard copy only’ form -- removed a file, pulled out a document, and handed it to Alec.  He smoothed out the sheet of A4 on the surface of the desk -- battered and dog-eared from use -- and ran his eyes down the page.  A single line, only one above his own £3,000 wager, was highlighted in pink.  He followed the data with the tip of his finger.  His jaw dropped when he saw the name it was linked to.

“You’re bloody kidding me,” he said, voice barely a whisper.

“Sent the cheque over by courier an hour ago,” Eve replied.   If he had been any other man, he might have fallen over at the news.  As it stood, he merely sat back down -- hard -- on the top of Eve’s desk, the paper hanging loosely in his fingers.  She rounded the corner of her desk and rested her hand on Alec’s shoulder.  “You going to be okay, love?”

“Bugger me!  I knew, I bloody _knew_ I should have fought James for that assignment.  Those sodding Games!”

“They have been rather close since then.  Well, as close as one can get, I suppose,” Eve admitted.  “Though I think there’s a connection with Q’s family, too.”

“Of _course_ there is.”

Eve couldn’t help but chuckle a bit at the despondent note in Alec’s voice.  If not for that _one_ bet, made just an hour before the wager had closed for all but Trevelyan who had been on assignment, Alec would have won the obscene pot of money.

“Alec?  Are you okay?”

Eve turned at the sound of the vaguely familiar, sonorous baritone behind her.  Greyson Holmes stood in the doorway to the office with M at his side.  Alec Trevelyan could never be called diminutive by any means, but Gray still had an easy four inches and three stone on the Double-O.  Whereas the majority of the Holmes men tended toward lanky and angular, Q's Uncle Greyson was athletic and robust, and was clearly successful in keeping the effects of his recent 50th birthday at bay through what could only be an exercise regime strenuous enough to rival that of the SIS’s own fitness programme.  Dark curls shot through with strands of silver were carefully tamed and his navy suit was precisely tailored, but it was the regard in the man’s gray eyes as he looked at Alec that caught Eve’s attention.  

This was _not_ the same the man she had met at Q and James’ wedding a mere three days ago.  The weight of his melancholy had been lifted from his frame and he practically radiated affection as he crossed the office in four long strides to Alec’s side.  Alec rose from the desk to greet him, and Gray reached out to cup Alec’s cheek in his large hand.  When the deadly Double-O momentarily turned his face into the comfort of Greyson’s palm, Eve was both stunned and heart-warmed by the open and wholly atypical tenderness between the two Englishmen.  

Had she been transported to a parallel universe where she was suddenly surrounded by Americans?!

Eve’s eyes shot to those of M who still stood in the doorway.  The spymaster wore a look of incredulity that she was pretty sure mirrored her own.

“Alec, _vozlyublennyy_ , you look like you’ve lost your best friend.” Concerned humour filled Greyson’s voice.

“He’s on his ‘sex holiday’ with his husband on Martinique.  No, this has nothing to do with James or Q,” Alec said with a huff of frustration.  

Gray chuckled at hearing Sherlock’s words coming out of Alec’s mouth -- his nephew was nothing if not direct -- but Greyson’s humour only grew as Alec told him the story of the lost wedding wager and the identity of the winner.

“Well, if it’s any consolation, the money will likely be gifted to charity in James’ name,” Gray said, not overly surprised by who the winner turned out to be.

“That’ll make him happy,” Alec admitted and a bit of his earlier smile returned to his face as he looked up at Greyson.  

Both James and Alec had been giving generously to several children’s organisations for years, and in truth, Alec had planned to do the same with the bulk of his not-winnings.  He didn’t need the money, after all.  It was the principle of the thing that grated.  However, Alec had also made tentative -- hopeful -- plans to take Greyson on holiday so that they could continue to get to know one another and said as much before he could actually think about what words were coming out of his mouth in front of his colleagues.   He then immediately elbowed Moneypenny in the side when she was unable to contain her exclamation of surprise that may have been along the lines of “Jesus, fuck, Alec, you don’t do anything by half-measures, do you?!”

Greyson tilted his head back and laughed, an infectious sound that filled the small office.  “I do like your friends, Alec.  Eve, James, even that R in Q-Branch.  You’re all wonderfully, refreshingly direct.  Not at all like the surreptitious snakes we deal with all the time, right, Gareth?” he said, looking over his shoulder at his friend before returning his attention to Alec.

“Quite,” replied Mallory stepping past the threshold for the first time.  He had known Greyson Holmes for 25 years, had served with him in the SAS for nearly a decade, and Gareth could honestly say he had never known the man to be quite so animated around anyone -- not even Serena, God rest her -- as he was in the company of Alec Trevelyan.   And though Mallory couldn’t claim to know 006 nearly as well, it was becoming rather clear that the regard was quite reciprocated.

“Come,” Greyson said, squeezing Alec’s hand quickly before stepping away.  “That scone I had down in the canteen with M here was ghastly, and you promised me real food over an hour ago.  We still need to stop by your flat so you can get cleaned up.  ”

“The sooner the better if you please, Mr. Darcy,” Mallory said, sniping at Greyson Holmes in the way only age-old friends can get away with.  “Do remember that this is Her Majesty’s Secret Service, not a Jane Austen drawing room.”

“Mr. _Darcy_?  Am I supposed to be Elizabeth Bennet in this scenario?!” Alec demanded, highly offended at the implication.

Eve laughed and slipped back into the chair behind her desk.  She pulled out a few sheets of paper and began writing as Mallory replied, “If the bonnet fits, 006.  If the bonnet fits.”

“I’ll be in touch about those proposals by the end of the week, Gareth,” Greyson said as he pulled a still very vocal Alec from the office.

Mallory rolled his eyes but couldn’t help but be secretly pleased by the developments that he had witnessed outside his office.  He took a deep breath and turned his attention to Moneypenny.  Back to business.

“Good morning, Miss Moneypenny,” he said pleasantly.  “Any changes to my schedule that I need to know about?”

“Not as of yet, sir,” she said, consulting the electronic diary she kept on her laptop.  “Possibility that Mr. DeVeane at the MoD may call to reschedule, but his PA promised to call before 13:00 if it was necessary.  Lady Smallwood will be here at 10:30.”

“Capital.  Thank you.  I’ll be tending to paperwork until then.”  Mallory hefted his briefcase in his hand and was reaching for the doorknob to his office when Moneypenny rose from her desk and handed him a sheet of A4.

“What’s this then?”  The first third of the page was filled with a list of rules with which he was, unfortunately, quite familiar.  But they had just settled that wager.

“The wager sheet.”

“For what now?”  He looked at the paper in his hand as if it was poised to strike.

Eve looked pointedly at the door through which Alec and Greyson had just left.

“Oh no! No, no, no, _absolutely_ _not_!  Eve, we just finished with all that folderol.  We’re not going --”

“Gareth,” Eve placed her hand on Mallory’s arm and spoke to him in soothing tones as if he were a skittish animal ready to bolt.  “You saw the same thing that I did; Lord, they were practically vibrating with love and need for each other.  There’s not going to be any pining from afar with those two.  We’re talking six to eight weeks at _most_.  Anyone who saw those two leave here together -- which will be the majority of HR and Inventories -- will come to the same conclusion and the pool will start whether you approve it or not.  Wouldn’t you rather keep some semblance of order to all of it?  Can you imagine what it would have been like if we hadn’t done that for Q and James?”

Mallory was barely able to contain his shudder at that thought.  He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and breathed deeply to try and push back the headache that suddenly threatened.  

“Same terms and conditions as before?” he asked, hesitantly.

“Same terms and conditions as before,” Eve confirmed with a sharp nod of her head and a tap to the page he held.  

“No side wagers.  Principal bets only.”

“As you say, sir.”  

M pulled his hand away from his face and glared, passing the wager sheet back to her.  “Don’t give me that ‘sir’ bull shite, Moneypenny.  I think we both know who’s really making the decisions here, and it certainly doesn’t feel like me.”

“As you say, sir.” Moneypenny smiled.  She always knew that Gareth Mallory was uncommonly brilliant and perceptive, for a man.  Eve returned to her desk and sat down, primly.  “I’ll bring you some paracetamol with your coffee to take care of that sudden headache, sir.  It wouldn’t do to be any less than your best for Lady Smallwood.”

M grunted once in appreciation and disappeared into his office.

Eve pulled her favourite pen from the lap drawer of her desk and wrote in her clear, precise hand at the top of the sheet above the rules:

 _Wedding Wager for The Right Honorable Greyson William Andrew Holmes CBE, Minister of State for Security and Mr. Alekzander_ _Sergeyevich_ _Trevelyan OBE, Secret Agent 006, MI6_

Alec may not have won the money, Eve thought with a smile as she waited for the ink to dry, but he had certainly come out on top.  Though, as she considered the pure magnetism and virility of Greyson Holmes, Alec might actually come out on bottom.  Eve giggled at the notion, and her smile widened into a cat-got-the-cream smirk that only the now-empty room could share.

  


_**~~00Q~~** _

 

 _“Monsieur_ James, I am terribly sorry to interrupt your morning, but this arrived for you both just now by messenger, and I was instructed to deliver it into your hands, _immédiatement.”_

“ _Merci_ , Baptiste,” James said, taking the heavy linen envelope that was handed to him.  Baptiste Gaillard was a kind, older gentleman of Martiniquais descent who had worked on the small island estate since his boyhood, first as a man-of-all-work but now as the chief caretaker.   “Oh, and please let Olivia know that the _Dorade grilée_ she made for us last night was exquisite.”  James and Q had been on the island for eight days of their month-long holiday, and both Baptiste and his wife had taken it as a personal challenge to feed the newlyweds as much excellent food as they could stand.  It hadn’t been much of a hardship.

“But if she comes anywhere near me with another pitcher of _Ti_ punch, I will have no choice but to disown her, no matter how much I love her,” Q mumbled from his chaise beneath the large umbrella that kept the fair-skinned Quartermaster out of the sun as he nursed a rather formidable hangover.  

Olivia Gaillard had known Q since he was in nappies.  In fact, she had been his nanny until she met Baptiste during a holiday to the family’s Martinique estate, and he proposed to her after a whirlwind courtship.  Though she had stayed on the island with her new husband, Olivia and Q continued to correspond, first through letters -- some of her most cherished possessions were the handwritten letters in Remy’s childhood scrawl, backwards Rs and all -- and eventually through email.  There had been no question in Q’s mind where he wanted to take James on their ‘sex holiday’ as his older brother so dramatically referred to it.

Baptiste laughed at Q’s own dramatics, though he knew his Liv’s Ti punch could definitely pack one.  “I’ll be sure to let her know, _Monsieur_ Remy.” He turned his attention back to Bond who sat at a table with his breakfast and a book under its own bright umbrella.  “ _Monsieur_ John had a similar reaction to the punch when he and _Monsieur_ Sherlock visited us last year,” he said, knowingly.  “Liv has a tea that will help.  I’ll bring that along with some more coffee for you and perhaps a few more of the crepes will not go amiss?”

“You are a prince among men, Baptiste,” James replied.  “Thank you.”

“Do be sure to say that very thing to my Olivia.  Perhaps I will remind her of it the next time she thinks I’ve spent too long in Sainte-Anne playing cards with Jacques and Henri.”

Once Baptiste disappeared down the tropical-flower lined path back to the main house, James purloined Q’s unused knife to slice through the top of the envelope and pulled out the letter within.  His eyebrows rose when he unfolded the paper and noted the distinctive crest embossed at the top of the stationary.  James pushed his chair back and rose from the table, taking his coffee and the letter with him.  He paused long enough to purposefully drape the blood red linen serviette on the back of his chair, and then descended the two stairs to the lower tier of the garden where Q rested beneath his umbrella on the thickly cushioned chaise.

“Make room, love,” James said to Q.  He pressed a kiss to Q’s temple when his husband groaned a momentary protest but nevertheless complied, and James slid in behind Q on the lounge.  He set his coffee cup and the letter next to Q’s glasses on the low table beside them and wrapped his arms and legs around his love.  “Feeling any better?” he asked against the shell of Q’s ear.

“Marginally,” Q admitted after a moment’s assessment.  The pounding inside his head had decreased significantly with the paracetamol he had downed half an hour ago, and his eyelids no longer felt as though they had been peeled off his face.  The shade and the fresh sea air tinged with the sweet, creamy scent of magnolia had also helped enough that Q could say he was about 65 percent recovered.  There might even be breakfast in his future.  Then again, maybe not quite yet.  “I’m never drinking that vile punch again,” he insisted and frowned at James’ answering chuckle.

“And how many times have you said that in your adult life about Olivia’s punch?”

Q couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his lips.  “More times than you can expect me to admit to.”  He rolled onto his side and snuggled more deeply into James’ embrace and closed his eyes.  “This is nice.”

“It is, isn’t it?”  James pressed a kiss to Q’s tousled curls and turned his attention to the blue water that rolled onto shore in calm, soothing waves only 30 metres distant from where they sat.  Q had initially been hesitant to enter the water, completely understandable given his experience with the Thames.  James had been patient and gentle as Q’s reluctance changed to frustration and, eventually, to determination.  It had ultimately taken only three days and seven attempts before Q was swimming again in the gentle surf.  

As endlessly graceful as Q was on land, he was as hopelessly awkward in the water, and James had quickly gained an understanding as to why swimming was such a challenge for the negatively-buoyant boffin.  He’d never given the notion of buoyancy much thought, James had never had to, but after pulling a drowned Q from the Acoustics Lab and seeing him struggle, yet persevere, in the Caribbean, buoyancy was very much at the forefront of his mind, and when they were in the warm, tropical water, James ensured he was never far from his Quartermas -- from his _husband’s_ side.

Though, truth be told, James wasn’t often far from his husband’s side when they were on land either.  In their first eight days, there weren’t many locations, or surfaces, left where the two of them hadn’t shagged each other stupid.  

There had been one … mishap, however.  On the afternoon of their fourth day on the island, Olivia had walked in on them; Q had been braced against the billiard table with his back to the rest of the Library while James gripped his shoulders and energetically pumped away at his husband’s delicious arse.  James, of course, heard her enter.  Q, thankfully, remained oblivious, completely caught up as he was in the sensations of James’ cock hitting his prostate on each thrust and moaning breathily with his slowly approaching orgasm.  As startling as the situation was -- James was as shameless as ever; however, he hadn’t stopped, never even broke rhythm -- he had to give Olivia credit for her brilliant way of handling the situation.  Rather than run screaming from the Library, Olivia had critically analysed the pair with what seemed to be -- at least to James -- a practised eye, crossed to the coffee table where she gathered the remains of their tea, and left the room as quietly as she had entered, but not before giving James a wink and a smile as she pulled the door shut behind her.  Q had never even known Olivia had been there and had grown a bit stroppy when James started laughing mid-shag.

But it was later that night, as Liv and Baptiste prepared dinner while James and Q sat drinking wine at the vast work island in the welcoming kitchen that James learned what an absolutely wicked sense of humour Olivia had.

“Baptiste, love, we may need to call down to Fort-de-France and have Moreau come up to work on the billiard table,” Olivia had said as she stirred the seafood saute on the hob.  Q, who had been leaning over the worktop to pluck a shrimp from the pan froze mid-reach.  He fell back onto the stool he had been sitting on, and his hazel eyes darted toward James who relied on his training to appear as unconcerned and oblivious as possible.  James wanted to see where Olivia was going with this.

“Good lord, why?” Baptiste asked as he finished grating Gruyere cheese atop the gratin of chayotes he was preparing.  Olivia slid to the side of the hob as he slipped the casserole into the oven and just as easily returned to her station as he moved on to the next task.  James admired the fluidity and familiarity of their actions that had clearly been born of their years together, and he couldn’t help but wonder if someday he and Q would move as easily around and with one another as the Gaillards did.

“The felt, of course.  It’s looking a bit worn in two places at the near end.”  Olivia added a splash of chardonnay to the pan and another dollop of sweet cream butter and continued to stir.

James had bit the inside of his cheek at the small whimper that had worked its way from his husband’s throat.  

“Again?” Baptiste sighed.  His graying head had been buried deep in the refrigerator as he hunted down the ingredients for the green salad.  “How big this time?”

“About the same as before, nothing huge, palm-sized, I’d say,” she said. She dipped a small slice of baguette into the saute and popped it into her mouth, testing the seasoning of light sauce.  She chewed and swallowed and added a pinch more salt before removing the pan from the flame.  “An odd wear pattern, though.  Almost as if someone had been bracing their hands against the table and kept pushing or _thrusting_ at it, repeatedly.”

Q had drained his glass of wine.  James had snorted.

“In fact, it reminds me exactly of what the table looked like after John kept shagging Sherlock against it.”  Q’s eyes shot to Olivia’s and the woman wore a smile of wicked glee as she continued, “How that boy avoided friction burns on his palms is beyond me, but if he ever does get them, at least he has a doctor in the house to tend to his ills.”

Q had jumped off of the stool and glared at Olivia, his face hot with embarrassment as he had finally cottoned on.  “You are simply … simply .... _horrible_ !” he had sputtered, mortified at the notion that he had been caught shagging by the woman he felt as close to as his mother.  Even then, however, Q had tried to deflect his embarrassment and regain his dignity by focussing on his brother.  “How in the bloody hell do you expect me to eat with … with … with _that_ picture in my mind?!  Gah!!”  Q had turned on his heel and marched out of the kitchen, James’ and Olivia’s laughter echoing after him.

James leaned over the worktop.  “You are an absolute treasure, dear lady,” he said and kissed Olivia on the cheek.  “I’ll go check on our drama queen.  How long until dinner’s ready?”

“Ten minutes, dear.”  Olivia smiled at him affectionately.

“See you in eight, then,” James said with a wink before turning to track down his wayward boffin.

Ultimately, it hadn’t taken much for James to smooth Q’s ruffled feathers; some intense snogging and a mutually satisfying blow job were quite sufficient to the task, though they did end up being five minutes late to dinner.  While neither Olivia nor Baptiste said anything further on the subject, after that encounter, James and Q worked to keep their more vigorous activities to the more discreet parts of the estate.

As he reminisced about the last few days, James’ hand had slipped under the waistband of Q’s sleep trousers and they each took great delight in James’ caressing the delightfully plump flesh of Q’s arse.  In fact, the evidence of said delight was hardening in each of their trousers.  

Q smiled at the sensation and pressed a kiss into James’ bare and increasingly tanned chest.  “What was so urgent in the post that Baptiste brought us?”

“A belated wedding congratulations, I believe,” James murmured against the top of Q’s head.  He handed Q his glasses and waited until Q had settled back against his chest before passing Q the letter they had received.

Q unfolded the stationary.  “Oh!  It’s from Great-Aunt Lilibet.”

“Of course. _Great-Aunt_ Lilibet.”  

Q could hear the eye roll in James’ tone and quickly elbowed him in the ribs.  “Behave.  You know full well she’s not my aunt in the strictest sense.  She and Gran drove together in the Women’s Auxiliary Territorial Service during the War.  Thick as thieves, those two were.”

James grunted in mock pain, though he rubbed a bit at his ribcage.  Pointy things Q’s elbows were.  “Yes, love.  So what does Great-Aunt Lilibet have to say?”

Q skimmed through the two pages of the letter then began to read.

“Dear Rembrandt,”

“Wait.  Why does she get to call you Rembrandt?” James interrupted.  “I get bloody threatened if I so much as _think_ about calling you that.”

Q tilted his head back to glare at his husband.  “Do you _really_ think I’m going to gainsay the Queen?”

James cocked an eyebrow in contemplation.  “Point taken.  Pray, Rembrandt, continue,” he said with a wave of his hand.  Another elbow, sharper this time, elicited a more realistic grunt of discomfort.

Q picked up the letter again and continued to read.

 

> _Dear Rembrandt,_
> 
> _I write to offer you and your James my sincere congratulations on the occasion of your marriage.  It seems like only yesterday that you were sitting with Wills and Harry taking tea in the nursery while your dear grandmother and I caught up on the events of our lives.  Now you are a man full grown with a husband who I have little doubt loves you dearly.  That the two of you are at the forefront of that which keeps each and every last one of us safe and secure is a truly comforting notion, as well.  I am grateful for and proud of each of you._
> 
> _Enclosed with this letter is a notable sum that I believe belongs to you far more than it does to me.  While I often find the discussion of personal finances impolitic and crass, that is not the case this time.  Some months ago, during one of my weekly meetings with the Prime Minister, Ms. May acquainted me of a wager at MI6 that would have been quite foolish of me to ignore.  Dubbed ‘The Wedding Wager’ it speculated on the date of your nuptials, and while I am not one to gamble on things speculative, neither am I one to walk away from a sure thing, and make no doubt, Rembrandt, you and your James are a sure thing._
> 
> _I knew Mr. Bond was something special when Olivia Mansfield sent him to me for my rather unorthodox entry into the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games, and that certainty was solidified by the exemplary way in which he comported himself before, during, and after the events that took place at his ancestral home, Skyfall.  When I became aware that the two of you were working closely together as Quartermaster and Double-O, I knew it was only a matter of time before you would find in each other more than just the tasks and trappings of espionage.  It has not always been an easy path for you both, I know, and certainly your experiences lend credence to The Bard’s assertion that ‘the course of true love never did run smooth.’  Nevertheless, I am confident that the largest bumps in your road are now behind you._
> 
> _Hence, my involvement in the wager.  In my mind, it was never a matter of if you and James married, rather it was a matter of_ when _. Even then, it was not ‘rocket science’ -- as Harry likes to say -- to determine the date you would choose.  That you would decide to celebrate your wedding on the day that your grandparents did the same was an obvious choice for anyone who knows you, Rembrandt._
> 
> _For me, winning was never about the money, rather it was about being proven right. You'd be surprised how infrequently that happens in one’s life. Even if that life is one belonging to a queen._
> 
> _I took the liberty of splitting the pot down the middle. The first half I sent, in equal measure, to Great Ormond Street, Make-a-Wish, and Barnardo’s, all children's charities James indicated he supported while we chatted in the helicopter on our way to the Games.  Each organisation does commendable work, and should James care to take on a more active role with any of them now that he is retired from active field work, I'm quite certain he would find himself readily welcomed._
> 
> _The second half of my winnings I leave to you, Rembrandt, to decide what to do with.  You may choose to gift it to further charities or keep it for yourself to do as you and James please.  If I had a say, which I am aware that I truly do not, it may even become a nest egg for a future family._
> 
> _I enjoyed tea with your dear mother yesterday at Windsor, and she was able to bring little Rosamund with her. What a delightful little girl.  As you once did with their father and uncle, she played in the nursery with George and Lottie, and by all accounts the three had a lovely time.  Your niece acquitted herself well.  However, knowing your brother as I do, I fear that Rosamund will not often be found in the company of my great-grandchildren -- he has always been quite possessive of that which he loves and struggles with letting her out of his sight, I understand.  I leave it to you and James then, Rembrandt, to further the abiding connection between our two families and hopefully provide William and Katherine’s children with playmates and close friendships similar to that which has meant so much to their father.  This is not a command from your Queen, of course.  Merely the hope of an aging woman who loves her family dearly._
> 
> _Congratulations, Rembrandt and James.  I wish you nothing but happiness in the years to come. I expect you both for a private dinner before the end of the summer, and that_ is _a command from your Queen._
> 
> _With affection,_
> 
> _Great-Aunt Lilibet_
> 
> _P.S.  The sum below has already been deposited into your account with Credit Swisse.  You may contact them at your leisure should you have any questions._
> 
>  

James followed Q’s finger to the number at the bottom of the page.  “So that’s half, huh?” he said after taking several deep breaths.

“I have no reason not to believe her.”  Q’s voice sounded strained.  Neither of them could pull their eyes from the sum printed in Lilibet’s elegant hand.

“That’s … one _hell_ of a nest egg.”

“Yeah …”

“What were those idiots thinking about putting in that much money?”

“I have no idea.”

“Rather flattering, though, I suppose.”

“That’s one way of looking at it,” Q exhaled and collapsed back against James’ chest.  All symptoms of his hangover had been shocked out of him, but he was left weak from the experience.

James pulled the letter from Q’s hand and put it back on the table.  He nuzzled Q’s temple and spoke into his hair.  “We haven’t specifically talked about it you know?”

“What?” Q asked, lazily.  He was staring out at the water, processing the news of the morning.

James hesitated, knowing that what he was about to say would be another crossroads for them both, one way or another.  “Children,” he said through another kiss to the top of Q’s head.

Q stiffened in surprise but James’ hands ran soothingly up and down his arms in response, gentling him.  “I can’t honestly say I ever gave it much thought,” Q admitted.  “For the longest time I never thought I’d find someone who’d be willing to love me inspite of --”

“Because of --” James interrupted, wrapping his legs around his husband, pulling him in closer.

“ -- my quirks,” Q finished with a roll of his eyes.  Q took one of James’ hands in both of his, tracing the scars and pressing a kiss to the centre of his palm before continuing, “so children never really entered into my plans.”

“And now?”

It was clear to Q in each gesture, the tone of his voice -- steady and serious with a hint of hope -- even the way in which James pressed his chest to Q’s back what James hoped Q’s answer would be.  Q had no intent or desire to deny him.

“Well, neither one of us is exactly hurting for money.”  

And they weren’t.  While their MI6 salaries were generous given their individual assignments, even with James’ new role training and evaluating recruits, James and Q were still _government_ employees, but each had lived frugally -- James’ fondness for fine dining, fast cars, and bespoke suits notwithstanding -- and had invested wisely.  They could live far more extravagantly for the next twenty years just off the interest of their profits and barely touch their now joint principal savings, though they both knew that they never would do so.

“Q?”  James growled.  He could tell when Q was drawing things out for dramatic effect.

“But I think that this money from the wedding wager would be best put to use for adoption or surrogate fees.”   

A rumble of pure joy born from its birthplace in his overfull heart erupted from James’s mouth.  He flipped Q in his arms and kissed his husband until they were both breathless, needy, and so very hard.   James rose from the chaise, quickly divested them both of their trousers, neither wore pants, and picked Q up in his arms and started carrying him to the shore.

“James!  James, put me _down_ !  What in the hell are you _doing_?”

“Getting started on that family we’re going to have,” the deadly assassin said with a grin before capturing his husband’s lips again in a quick, bruising kiss.

“Not _quite_ how that works in this case, you know.”  Q laughed against his love’s mouth but had ceased his struggling in spite of the humiliation of being carried across the beach like a damsel in distress.

“Nay, Remy, tis exactly how our family starts,” James said in a husky whisper dripping with Scots seduction.  “We’ll adopt, certainly, but I also wan’ a wee bairn with dark, impossible curls and hazel eyes that look in t’ m’ very soul, jus’ like their Da’s do.  Need t’ make sure all ya parts are in working order, ya ken.”

“But Baptiste will be back --”

“Nothin’ll be stoppin’ me from takin’ what I want … and what yer body’s sayin’ it wants t’ give me, luv.”  He whispered further in Q’s ear, telling him about the serviette he had left on the chairback, a courtesy he had discussed with both Gaillards: an adult version of the ‘sock on the doorknob,’ the ‘do not disturb’ sign common to university dormitories around the world.

“Be careful of your leg, James.  You’ve only been out of the brace for three weeks, you nutter.  It won’t do either of us a bit of good if it gives out on you now.”

James slowed his pace as they reached the water line, but he didn’t release Q. Rather he clasped him more closely to his chest as they slipped into the sea together.  “I’ll _always_ be able to support you, Q,” James said, the brogue slipping away as if to emphasise the gravity of his words.  

When the waves were finally high enough to reach their chests, Q twisted in James’ arms and wrapped his legs around his husband’s waist.  As he did so, their cocks rubbed together deliciously, and their mutual need brought their mouths together roughly.  When they parted, Q cupped the back of James’ head in his hands and James did the same, bringing their foreheads together.

“I’ll always be here to love you,” James continued, carding his fingers through Q’s curls.  “I’ll be here to fight with you and for you, to worship you, to drive you crazy, and always to love you.  I know you feel the same, Q.  I see it in your eyes when you look at me.  But there may be times when we’ll struggle with that.  If that happens, we’ll remember this moment.  The two of us here in the sea.  We’ll remember that everything is lighter, easier, simpler in the water.”

He kissed Q tenderly.  “That’s when we’ll let the water carry the weight of us both.”

 

_Fin_

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I hope you enjoyed this epilogue. If you did, I'd love to hear from you. I have a few other things in the works, and positive feedback is always such an amazing motivator.
> 
> Cheers!


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